Oral History Program Edward Sickles Interviewed by Quinn Beckstead 21 August 1971 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Edward Sickles Interviewed by Quinn Beckstead 21 August 1971 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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 interviewer, 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sickles, Edward, an oral history by Quinn Beckstead, 21 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Edward Sickles conducted by Quinn Beckstead on August 21, 1971. Edward discusses his experiences working for railroads in Ogden, including his experiences with the labor union there and what the benefits were like. Also present is Edward’s wife, Lois, who is referred to as Mother. QB: This is an interview of Edward Sickles by Quinn Beckstead on August 21, 1971 for the California State Oral History Program at Mr. Sickles' house in Ogden, Utah. Ed, why don't you give us a little background, tell us where you were born and something about your early childhood? ES: Well, Quinn, I was Born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and at about the age of 10 years old, I moved to Kentucky. Went to school in Kentucky, and when my mother passed away from there, we moved back to Ohio. From there I went to West Virginia, then back to Ohio. Went to school in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. QB: You really moved around a lot, didn't you? ES: [Laughs] Yes, quite a bit. Yeah, I traveled quite a bit. Then I was finally raised by my aunt and uncle, and then I went to the Three C’s when I was out of school. QB: What's the Three C’s, Ed? ES: Civilian Conservation Corps, put in by President Roosevelt. I came to Idaho, spent 18 months, then returned to Ohio and went back to work for a wholesale grocery. Then the war came along, then I joined the Army, spent almost five years, then I ended up here in Utah. QB: Do you have a lot of nice experiences in the Army? Would you like to go back in again? 1 ES: Well, I don't think I'd like to go in now, but I was foolish for comin' out. QB: By now, you could've been retired, couldn't you? ES: I could be retired. Instead of that, I'm still trying to get to be retired. QB: Oh, I see. What are some of your hobbies, Ed? What do you like to do? ES: Play pool and golf. QB: Are you a real good golfer? ES: Not that good. I get by with the strugglers. QB: I know a lot of the fellas down at the railroad, they've got the golf bug and really play golf, don't they? ES: Quite a bit of 'em. Most of 'em. A lot of them's give it up. I mean, there's a few of them plays. Me and Mother gets out and chases the golf ball. QB: Are you better than Mother or is she better than you? ES: Well, that's a toss-up. [All laugh] Well, I'll put it this way, I hate to run her down, but I can beat her. QB: I was going to ask your wife if you could put your fingers in your ears while he tells me which one's the best golfer. LS: Oh no, that don't bother me [laughs]. ES: Oh, she knows. No, well the only difference is I hit the ball better and harder. She can putt better than I can. QB: Well, that's good. What did you do when you got out of the Army? ES: Well, I looked for a job, and I thought I wanted to go to the railroad, so I got a job the second day I was home and went to work for the Railway Express Agency. I 2 worked for them from 1945 till 1949 when I changed over to the OUR&D [Ogden Union Railway and Depot] Company, and I've been with them ever since. QB: What made you change from the Railway Express Office? ES: Well, they were cutting in and that didn't look too good to me, so the 40-hour week come in and I had a chance to go to the OUR&D, so I took that. QB: When you quit the Railway Express, wasn't that the year they had that bad snow? ES: 1948 was the bad snow. I was working Express then. I went to work in July of '49 for the OUR&D Company. Then I worked for both of 'em until September, I think it was, and then they made me take my choice which job I wanted. So, I went to the OUR&D at the baggage room. QB: You started out the baggage room? ES: Yes, the [unintelligible] hired me. So, I stayed there and then I traveled from there to the freight office, the freight platform, the yard office, back to the baggage room, then back to freight office, and that's where I am now. QB: Well, I worked for the baggage room for a little while. Maybe you could give us a little background, some detail about some things you do at the baggage room and some of experiences you had over there? ES: I've worked some days, some afternoons, some nights. I was baggageman, tractor operator, mailman, checkman. I've been foreman. I had them all. QB: [Starts to speak, then stops] Go ahead. ES: I don't know where to go. Just handling mail sacks is the only thing. Christmases was our worst. Worked 12 hours a day. 3 QB: They used to handle a lot of mail over there, and there used to be a lot more mailmen over there than there are now. They've really laid a lot them off, haven't they? ES: Yeah, they've laid off at least 70. QB: Seventy? ES: Seventy out of there since, say, '49 until now. QB: How many are left over there about? ES: About I'd say right around 10. QB: Is that all? ES: That's all. QB: Ten on the three shifts? ES: That includes all their shifts, day in and day out. QB: Good heavens. ES: Yeah, all eight, and the mail we get now comes in on truck. Or they do, I guess, have some cars that come in by freight service with mail in. Not too much of that, but they have some. Not too much, most of it is by truck. QB: I know I worked over there for a little while, I had over the baggage room, and sometimes when they were busy it was pretty rough work, wasn't it? ES: Quite heavy work. I mean, lifting and lugging those mail sacks. Magazines were the worst, you know that. Lifting and lugging that. QB: Oh yeah, magazines and those search. 4 ES: Search, yeah, search was quite a thing. Then the post office service took California away from 'em and that ended that. Well, it's been quite an experience. I mean, I'm glad I tried 'em all and learned a little bit. QB: Well, I know when I was down there, you knew quite a few jobs, but there's all kinds of people that were down there too, isn't there? ES: Yeah, there's lazy ones and ones that will work and vice versa. QB: But then there's a lot of individuals down there that seemed to... Well, even some of the younger ones, you know, passed on now, died off. ES: Oh, yes. QB: You remember, it was Orville Birch and Burton Payne— ES: Burton Payne, and Stan Swanky, and, well, like Joe Clinky, the general foreman, he's gone. Geez, we've had Gibb Stewart in the freight office. QB: Lloyd Lawrence. ES: Lloyd Lawrence. QB: Bill Cross. ES: Bill Cross and Jim Morrison. There's so many of them gone that's... Alf Adams finally retired. QB: Wasn't he retired just a short time ago? ES: He retired last year. Then Frank Taylor, they forced him out '68. QB: Is Frank Taylor still living? ES: Yes. So is Charlie Beshear, and he retired when he was 70. QB: You know there, Charlie Beshear would be a good one to get an interview from. 5 ES: Yeah, he would be a real good one, because he's been through there. Well, he's been gone now about three years, and I mean he growed up in the place, you know, like Johnny Vaughn. I mean, that's the only place he's ever known. I've worked all over. QB: Well, you know, things have really changed down there, and the employment in the last several years has really decreased. Now, like you say, there was about 70 that... ES: They've lost out of the baggage room. QB: Lost out of the baggage room, and then... ES: We've lost a lot out of the freight office, and they've lost quite a few out of the yard. QB: Did you ever work over to the freight platform? ES: Yes, I worked on the freight platform, worked on the transfer press. QB: Can you think of any maybe real interesting experiences that happened to you in any of these departments? Now, for example, I was just interviewing Jack Steele this morning, and [he] told me he'd mashed his fingers when he was working at the store over on the freight platform, and Joe Clinky said, "Oh, you don't need to go to the hospital, we can fix that up right here." He drilled some holes in his fingernails where the blood had coagulated and drilled a couple of his fingernails then took some pins and pocket knife and stuck under there, and I guess it just about killed poor old Jack when he said, "No, you don't need to go to a hospital. You go back out there and work now." 6 ES: Well, I had the same experience. He didn't drill no holes, but he cut the loose skin off where I busted my finger when Jack Smith and I was closing the door one night. He wrapped it all up and that and told me to go home and it'd be all right by morning. I got home, and my wife called the clinic, said it was killing me, and she told him, send me up to the hospital. He was no doctor. So, they drilled it and fixed it up, and then I went back to work the next day. QB: Maybe your wife ought to have sent you back down to Joe Clinky and have an exam instead of the doctor. [Both laugh] ES: Ah, Joe was a good old fella. He meant well, but he wanted to be operating [unintelligible]. QB: He was a cutter-up old guy, wasn't he? ES: Yeah, he was a pretty good old guy. I mean, he just had a set way. QB: A set way of doing things and that was it, huh? ES: Yeah. Only thing you'd do was just argue and tell him what you thought. Let it go. QB: He's passed on now, hasn't he? ES: Yeah. He died down in Las Vegas. QB: His brother that worked down there, is he still living—? ES: He's retired, yeah. He's still living, or was... QB: Frank. ES: Frank. Yeah, he's still living. Well, there's a lot of them dead from down there. Ernie Taylor, I don't [know] whether you knew him or not. QB: No. How about Reardon? Jack Reardon, is he still living? 7 ES: I don't remember hearing him dying. He was retired. Since I quit working the service station I don't see any of those guys. He used to come up there all the time. But he got married again, and I really don't know. John Ricketts died, the last one that I know of. He died... I guess he must have been about '67. QB: He had already retired though, didn't he? ES: Yeah, he had retired. QB: He worked down there for several years. I guess his two boys still work down there. ES: Ralph's still working the midnight. Ralph's on midnights at the baggage room. I don't know whether Jerry's working any or not, unless he's a janitor. They put a lot of janitor's jobs out, and they cut some of them off too, so I don't really know. QB: You know, it's one of the few places where they often said that you start at the top and work your way to the bottom. ES: That's usually the way it goes. You start out at the top and drop all the way to the bottom. QB: I know—'course, I didn't hire out. I hired out a lot later than you did, but I know when I hired out there, six months after I hired out, I could really hold a lot of jobs, and 10 years later I was on the extra board. ES: That's right. I mean, it varies. There's guys older than me that could hold my job. It's getting less money, you know. I mean, I don't know how they'd make out work meant that they could, for seniority-wise, they could hold it. 8 QB: What'd they close the freight office down for, over on 24th Street? You know, they moved you over to the yard office. Would you like to say something about that? ES: Well, I guess they wanted to get us all together, sooner or later. Why, when '73 rolls around, they'll probably merge ‘em both together, cut some more jobs off, the way it looks to me, but that's when our guarantee is up. They're supposed to keep us a job the rest of our life, you know, until we retire, but then they could move us anywhere, and then you'd be lying in this pay. QB: Oh, I was wondering what you was talking and referring to '73. ES: Well, '73, that's when everything comes to a head again, with the unions and everything, and our guarantee. They can't move us until '73. QB: Oh, but then after '73... ES: After '73, they can move us or pay us off. QB: There's just a skeleton crew down there now. I certainly hope that they don't let anybody off, because the employment picture in Ogden isn't too good now anyway. ES: No, it's getting worse. There's taxes they giving all these outfits around your way. They're all moving out. That Murdock company that I seen in the paper the other night, they're moving, and they employ about 325 people. They're moving to California. QB: I certainly hate to see much else done as far as curtailment of employment, because what would there be left? Second Street? Hill Field and IRS? ES: [Speaking at same time] Hill Field and IRS. 9 QB: If they did away with those... ES: They'd [unintelligible]. Well, and part of IRS is going to Fresno, see. QB: Is that right? ES: That's going to Fresno, California. They're not making any regulars out there now. QB: When was that gonna go? LS: I think it'll be this next income tax year. I'm not sure. ES: Her sister works there, that's where we get all the dough from. LS: We don't get near the California amount. QB: But we used to. LS: We used to do work not far from California. ES: No, when they cut all them RPOs off of the trains, and that, why, that started rolling backwards for us, mail and help in the baggage rooms and stuff like that. They also, before that, they done away with LCL [lessened car load]. They don't take nothing less than 40,000 pounds, which is a car load. Overall, why, they pushing all the small stuff to the truck lines. QB: Well, what's some of the major changes you've seen since you've been out there, Ed? The railroad, I'm sure you've seen a lot of them. ES: Well, they've gotten rid of an awful lot of help. That's the biggest change they've done. They've done away with a lot of the work that they used to do. They're getting these computers and stuff in that takes the place of men. Just everything, raising the rates higher. I mean, that's one of the big things. Now, just like if they 10 inspect, which used to be about, for an inspection, grain inspection used to around four something. They charge 'em $15.86, I believe it is now. QB: That's about four times as much. ES: They used to inspect 'em in Pocatello and then they'd even give 'em a second inspection here. They'd charge 'em for that, the price goes higher. The grain companies now waive all their inspections in Ogden, or the majority of 'em. They ship 'em right in to like Farmers Grain or Globe or Ogden Flour. QB: Because the inspection fee's too high? ES: That's right. Then they just ship them out, or have the inspectors come to their plant and inspect them on their own. LS: It was about the same thing in the stockyards, too, wasn't it? ES: Well, the stockyards, why, the railroads didn't want the livestock. Then the livestock company out here wouldn't take care of it. They didn't know what they was doing. The guy out there wanted to make a big name, and they was gonna put a lot of warehouses and stuff out there. He started cutting the help, and our livestock would lay all night there, halfway to the next morning to get loaded out. So, they finally just cut the whole thing out. They fired the guy that was running the stockyards and just closed her up. QB: Now the stock yards are completely closed down. ES: Closed, there's nobody over there. QB: Well, don't they have any stock? Well, I guess they don't. 11 ES: No, our stock, if it comes from the north, it either feeds through Pocatello and then goes as far as it can to the next stop, or they get it arranged to go to Salt Lake and feed and then on south. QB: It goes through here to Salt Lake? ES: Yes. I'd like to see them put that Los Angeles train back on, the passenger train. They've got this one going to the west now that is being fairly well loaded every night. Last month, when they were on strike, they was four tickets over when they went out on strike than they had been for the whole month the year before, and that was a half of the month gone when they went on strike. QB: They had four tickets over up to that time? ES: Sold more over than they did the year before. QB: Well, back talking about this LCL. Now, have they completely eliminated the LCL down there? ES: Completely. No LCL whatsoever. QB: So, that cut down a lot of employment? ES: Cut a lot employment there. They've lost a lot of men over to the freight platform. In fact, I think they haven't got but about ten men that works out there. QB: From the time you were hired out there, at the peak of the employment, about how many did they have over the freight platform, would you say? ES: Oh, I'd imagine they had at least 50. They had at least 50 over there. But they've cut down everywhere. I mean, the freight office has lost a lot of jobs. In fact, we used to have four and five guys on afternoon, which now we got two. We used to 12 have about three men on midnights or four, now there's one, so they've all done a pretty good job of cutting. QB: They cut out all that... Remember when we used to make the 922s and 1532s? ES: Yeah, 922s, 1532s. They're all cut out. QB: Then we did the film developing over at the freight office. ES: Yeah, that was done over there, and the mailing was done over there. All that's gone with the birds. QB: They don't film anything anymore, do they? ES: Nothing. No, they don't. Well, they've got these picture machines down there. If we need a copy of a waive bill or a wire or something that comes in, well, we can go take a picture. But other than that, well, like I say, all they've done in the last 10 years is cut. QB: Keep cutting? ES: Keep cutting. QB: Do you think the railroad could've avoided a lot of layoffs if they'd tried to handle their business better? ES: Oh, yes. I still think that they could do a lot, because the railroads can haul it a lot better than the trucks can, because they can roll 24 hours a day without having to stop too much for refueling and resting. QB: You recall, Ed, only cars used to come in over at the ice house. In the summer, they had to ice all these cars, and they would hire several hundred icemen, and they would ice all the cars and then the... 13 ES: Yes. When I worked the Express and was foreman there, that's what I did. I took all the ice specials over to the ice house and re-iced them and got them out of town. QB: But they've torn all the ice docks down over there. ES: Now they have done them, like the BFE hasn't got too much help now either. They're making all the mechanical reapers, so all they have to do is inspect 'em and let 'em go. The whole system, everything is cut. The whole railroad system. QB: Yeah, they had that mechanical icer, but I guess they don't use that too much because everything now is— ES: Well, they don't use too much ice anymore anyway. Not a great deal. They've cut a lot of employees off too, but they haven't even called back to work this year. Most of it is inspection now. QB: I wonder about how many years some of these PFE men have to have to hold a regular job down there now. ES: The youngest guy that's working is Parkerson, and I think he's about 43, 44 now. QB: That's the youngest man you hired out, 43 or 44? ES: He's the youngest man over there. Parkerson is the youngest. Now, I think it's around that date, I'm not sure. He might be little younger than that. QB: I guess they just don't hire anybody in the summer. ES: Not too much, no. They haven't hired none. They've got enough guys laid off that they can fill in with 'em. In fact, this year, they sent about six or eight up to Pocatello to work. QB: Because they didn't have the work for of them down here? 14 ES: They had no work down here, and they figured if they could send them up there, they didn't like it because part of 'em was working in Ogden on other jobs, that they'd give up and quit. You know, give up all their rights and stuff. I guess most of 'em stuck it out. QB: Well, in regards to the baggage room again, Ed, so we can have it recorded here, maybe you could go into some detail about how they sorted the mail, and what procedures they used to sort the mail and send it to certain directions, and how they could tell what mail was which? ES: Well, they had certain, like going west, they had what they called an Oakland car, which they separated mail that was close to Oakland. It would go into Oakland and deliver out there on truck or otherwise. They had cars that goes to Frisco. Then on their local stuff, they put that in a car separated according to the stations from here to Reno. They separate it out the way it could be unloaded and they carried a messenger on there and he unloaded it as they got to each little town in Nevada. Then they had cars that they called to the Hazen branch that went as far as Reno and then took off from there. They also had other cars that was a mixture of Sacramento and stuff between Sacramento and Oakland that they could throw off on their way down. Then they had the RPO cars that towed all the first class mail off. QB: RPOs you're referring to, that's railway post office. ES: That's the railway post office. They did away from all of that. Then they had cars going south as well as north and east. You separated the local in local cars and the through stuff in through cars. 15 QB: Now, at the height of employment down there, about how many trains came in on each shift? ES: Oh, well, at the heighth of it, why, let's see, on nights we had 31, 33, and 29 going north a day. The reverse numbers, which would be 34, 32, and 30, came south from the north each day. Then they had 21 going west and 22 coming east from the west, plus 23 and 24 coming from the east and the west. They had 37 and 38 that run to Denver, and they also had 9 and 10 that went to Denver. 27 and 28 went from the east to the west and from the west to the east. They had 103 and 102 that went west and east. They had 3 and 4 that went south, and they had 9 in 10 that went south and east to Denver. Then they had the DNR chief used to come into Ogden, and they got away with that. That went from Ogden to Denver. Before that, they had more trades than that, but that was during the War years. QB: Now all of 'em been eliminated, haven't they? ES: All been eliminated. We haven't got no passenger trains now. The government's got the only one we got. They run a lot of freight trains. QB: You know, the railroad been known for fellas doing a lot of horse play and such. Jack Steele told me quite a few experiences that he had while he was working down there at the railroad. I also recall an instance where Jimmy Hardy, who I have interviewed, said that during the War, over [at] the old yard office— remember the old yard office on 24th street? ES: Yeah, over on West 24th Street. QB: He said at midnight they had to go up the stairs, the... 16 ES: To get up on the [unintelligible]? QB: Well, no, the restrooms were up there, upstairs on top of the yard office. The restrooms are up there, and they had a couple of rooms in there, I guess, that they stored supplies and everything. ES: Yeah, the supply rooms were upstairs. QB: And it was quite dark up there. He said you had to be real careful, because if you didn't you'd step on somebody that was laying out on the floor sleeping. There's quite a few people laying all over the floor up there [laughs]. ES: Well, they used to do that at the baggage room in between trains, you know. They'd get a break and there wasn't nothing going on. Well, they'd lay down and sleep, you know. QB: There's quite a bit of card playing over there too. ES: Yeah, they played cards there too. Yeah, when you said that, why, Charlie Wilson, you know he passed away too. QB: Now when did he pass? ES: He passed away—how long has that been, Mother? Not too long, yeah? LS: No. ES: He passed away not too ago. He used to love to play pinapple. Yeah, he just passed away. Tommy Price just passed away. QB: Oh, for heaven's sake. ES: They're all going. I mean, just a matter of working up to it, you know. You just wait your turn. 17 QB: Well, you used to have those check pools down there, remember? Did you ever get into those check pools? ES: I never got in those check pools. QB: Is that still going on? ES: No, I don't think any of them have them anymore. Not enough in each department to be worth your dime, really. QB: You ever wish that you'd hired out as a engineer or fireman or brakeman? In other words, on the operating end of it instead of the non-operating like you are? ES: Well, if I knew then what I know now, I'd rather be in the operating end than I would the clerk's end, because there's more money to pick up than there is for the clerk. You don't have to know as much to be working on as a conductor or a brakeman or foreman or engineer, I don't think they have to know that much either, as the clerks are supposed to know to keep the trains rolling. QB: They say now that some of these brakemen never get out of their caboose on some cases. ES: Well, the only reason they'd have to get out is in case they stopped, you know. That'd be the only way, to be the flagman. QB: I was going to say, in many instances they switch by remote control. ES: Well, a lot of them, but that's done by the yard too, see. The switchmens do that, not the brakemens and the conductors. The only brakemens and that does any switch out is on these short lines in these local rooms where they pick up and cut out, you know. Then they've got to get out and work. Like in my last special at 18 Park City, those, where they go these short distance, why, they do their own switching at these cool places or whatever it might be. QB: They still have those little locals that go out? ES: Yeah, they still fold. QB: Bamberger, I guess that's— ES: Well, then they got one from Hill Field, see, they pick up out there and then bring him this way from Clearfield. QB: Hill Field local. ES: I think Clearfield's doing quite a bit in South Fair. I think they're doing, actually, as much business if not more than we're doing. QB: Okay, so they really eliminated a lot of jobs in the freight office and the freight platform and the baggage room. Then here just, well, the Railway Express, and then here just recently, not too long ago, they cut out all the laundry and... ES: Well, the laundry's all out there. They got some of 'em over in our offices, the yard office and freight office. QB: Well, now how did they handle their seniority? ES: They haven't got any seniority. I mean, just from the time that they... They just work them extra here. They can learn a job, why, they can bid on it. They went to the bottom of the list. QB: I see. In other words, somebody over there that had 40-year seniority at... ES: Well, he went to the bottom. QB: Right to the bottom. ES: He goes right to the bottom. 19 QB: And the date starts when he hired out at the yard office. ES: That's right, when they boost him over there to work. QB: [Are they] told they have a guarantee of some kind so they don't—? ES: They got a guarantee. I don't know just how much it is. I guess it's their wages for five years they got from the time the laundries stopped until they took them, but they've been UP all the way. Us, we're foreigners. We're UPSP and anybody that wants us. So, that's the way the ball bounces. LS: Got some of those commissary too, wasn't it? ES: Yeah, the commissary too. They pushed them all away. We got some of them in the baggage room, or did add, they're not there now. Some of 'em went to Salt Lake, but they went to the bottom of the list too. Their seniority wasn't worth a dime with us. QB: Well, the commissary, 'course, when they eliminated all these passenger trains, they didn't have much use for it, did they? ES: That's right. That done away with the commissary. So, all in all, we get everybody that's working. When they do away with their job, they send 'em to the purge. QB: Well, how do you feel about the elimination of the passenger service? Do you feel that, say for example, that the railroads could have done more to keep more of the passenger service on the railroads instead of taking other carriers such as the airplane and the bus and driving their car? Do you feel that the railroads are at fault in many respects by the loss of passenger service, or do you think it's just a trend of the times, that that would have happened anyway? 20 ES: You know, I think the trend of times has got a lot to do with it because there is a lot of people that would like to fly. If you're in a hurry, you'd want to fly if you had something you had to do. But I still think that [if] the railroad would have took care of it and treated the people right instead of trying to run them off, they would have had some passenger service along with their freight service. But they'd like to get those passenger service out of the way and straight just on freight service. What they like is all through stuff, take it from one city to the next and drop it off, pick it up, and return back. QB: All car load. ES: All car load business. They don't want to fool with that small stuff. QB: Well, I assume too that, 'course, with the passenger service, for the amount of revenue they got out of it, that they weren't reimbursed from the passenger end of it as well as for the freight end of them. Then also the fact that their liability is much greater in case something happened there. ES: Oh yes, well that's true too. They got a lot of liability, but I mean, if you've got two things going for you, if one slips a little bit, the other one, as long as you're making a good profit on your money, I can't see why you'd want to eliminate the one to cause hardship on somebody else. There's a lot people in this world that will never ride an airplane and they go nowhere, and there's a lot of people in this world that won't drive a car. QB: Well, I guess that's right. I was thinking of it strictly from a monetary standpoint. ES: I mean, to the service to the country, I still think if we get into trouble, they can't keep enough airplanes up in the air to get everybody where they want them 21 without the train service. They can't haul all the ammunition and guns and clothing and stuff in airplanes to keep their armies going. QB: Well, I'm sure there's definite need there for the railroad. ES: I don't think they can ever do away with all the railroads. They might simmer it down to where there don't take so many to run it, but I still don't think that they'll ever get rid of it. QB: Well, I've been told on several occasions that railroads tried to make it hard for the passengers they did have so that'd discourage ‘em from riding the trains. For example, I was told one case in particular where the fellow came and wanted to take a train to some point and he had to go through so much red tape to try and get a seat and get a reservation that he got kind of disgusted. ES: Oh, well, I know that for a fact that they discouraged that. In fact, I've seen wires to that effect, "Don't take any reservations for trains." QB: Oh, is that right? ES: I've see that in black and white. QB: Don't take any reservations, but yet they had plenty of space? ES: They had space. Like I say, people are hard to accommodate. A lot of them want so much, and they want it for as little as they can get it, you know, which makes it a bad problem. But the railroads, the SP, just kept adding on prices for theirs. I can remember back when I went down to check on a ticket, and working for the UP, that it cost me more for me and my wife to go down there than I could drive down there for about a fourth of what it cost me to pay them to ride the train and me working with 'em. 22 Well, and there was a lot of people brought their tickets back east, when they got out here and they was going on west, they had to pay more money on their ticket in order to get ride on to the west. SP had another rate tacked on it, add an extra $10 or $20 on the ticket. I think they just really wanted to get rid of it. That's one way of doing it is rob the people when you feed ‘em and pay a dollar for a sandwich. That's quite a bit of money for a sandwich, even the high things we got now. QB: Prices are much greater than they used to. ES: And the people could actually afford that wants to go, because a lot of 'em are retired people. With the retirement that most people gets now, they can't afford to take these trips and eat on the road and drive because it's just too expensive. QB: As far as the price of the tickets were concerned, I think you could get an airplane ticket, say, for example, from here to San Francisco or from here to Los Angeles. ES: Yeah, very few dollars cheaper than the airplane, and you waste a couple of days getting there. Well, 24 hours. QB: Yeah, you waste all that time. ES: And they could be down there. Well, we sent our boy to San Francisco on the airplane, and the time we got him on the plane, and we fiddled around a little while down there and we got home, he called us from—it flew him to San Francisco and rode a cab over to Frisco and then caught a bus from Frisco up to Vallejo, and he was in Vallejo at my wife's aunt's. QB: [Laughs] He called it by the time you got home. 23 ES: Yeah, we hadn't been home—well, like I say, we fooled around down there about an hour maybe before we drove home, and he was already up to his destination. He was going to Mare Island; he was in Vallejo. So, it's a lot faster, and like I say, for a few dollars more than the cost of the train, if you like to fly—I mean, if you don't like to fly, why, the money ain't that good, or the time either. But I'd rather ride the train. When we go to California, we got relations down there, we don't need a car. I would rather ride a train than drive there. There's just a lot of people like that. But, like I say, you can't ride 'em if they don't run 'em. I think the big mistake is the train they cut off going south outta here. QB: That's rather strange, because they have a train going west, but not south, and yet down south to Los Angeles, there's just as much population or more down there. ES: Los Angeles and Las Vegas. You got Las Vegas. A lot of people likes to go down there would go down for the weekend or ride a train down. They'd get on the train here overnight and they're there the next morning, and then you can leave there the next morning and get here the next night, you know. I mean, it's a matter of short distance to ride the train, and you're not tired when you get there and you can sleep on the way back. That's the part I can't see, but I guess there's smarter people than me at running this thing. I really don't know. QB: Well, I know they used to have a group of people, I don't know what they called them, the SP or EPO timers? ES: Yeah. Well, they got both. 24 QB: Anyway, they used have this organization, they'd have a bunch of railroaders go down every once in a while to Las Vegas and spend the weekend. ES: Yeah, to Las Vegas and Reno. They had a lot of good things going. I mean, like I say, I don't know all the ifs, ands, or buts. It's not my money that's running the railroad, so I can't tell 'em how to use it. QB: But isn't it true though, Ed, that they're hauling a lot more tonnage now— ES: Oh yes, by far. QB: —In comparison with several years ago? Maybe you'd like to comment or reminisce. ES: Well, they were running a lot bigger trains. Where they used to run 80 and 100 cars, it's 150 and up. Then the cars are getting bigger. Where they used to be 40foot cars, they got 60-foot, 61, and they're making 'em bigger. The boxcars are bigger, the hoppers are bigger. QB: So there's a lot more tonnage in each car. ES: Oh, yes. Where we used to have a lot of cars coming here, 50,000 a week we thought was a lot a week. Now they can bring in 200,000, 100,000, you know, which makes a heck of a lot difference than a 50,000-pound car coming in. A lot more cars, so if you figure by the cars that come in, instead of the tons they haul, why, we're getting a lot less cars. QB: I guess that's why they changed that from the car count to the tonnage count. ES: Yeah, it'd be tonnage now. Why, just like the Express counted theirs when I worked there; they didn't count how much money they got, it was how many shipments they had. That don't tell you nothing either, I mean, because like when 25 I went to work for the Express, you could send a pound package from here to Salt Lake for 25 cents plus a one-cent emergency charge, which made it 26 cents. The last count I had on it was a few years back it was over a dollar and a half a pound going to Salt Lake. QB: A dollar and half. ES: For about 33 miles. You ship it here and deliver it down there. You could sell the same thing through the post office for about 20 cents. You know, I mean, you'd price yourself out of business. That's, like I say, I think that's what the railroaders do and do. I mean, sure things has gone up, I agree, and wages and all has gone up, but I don't think the wages has gone up as fast as the freight rates has gone. QB: The freight rates has gone up faster. ES: They're up quite a bit, yeah. QB: You know one thing, Ed, I really noticed in the last few years that trains going east, for example, are being powered by Southern Pacific units. They've got Southern Pacific cabs. ES: Oh yeah, same thing with the UP. Instead of booking these trains, they block these trains, what they call blocking. Like if it's coming from say Cheyenne down to here, if it's got anything that goes off at Green River, they got that blocked. Green River block. If it's a-goin' north and it comes down around Kemmerer and going on up north, well that's blocked in a section. Then what comes off at Ogden proper, that's blocked in a section. They just cut the engines off, get that off. QB: In blocking the trains like they do now, I guess that eliminates a lot of switchmen. 26 ES: A lot of switching, and then they just add on, if they've got cars in the yard that's loaded and ready to go, they add that much on to make their tonnage up, and away they go. QB: They don't layover in the yards I guess like they used to, do they? ES: Not too much, no. That makes them a little faster running. There's some stuff that gets, like they repair, like I've heard 'em hollerin' down at the PFE, they can have a car ready in 20 minutes. Instead of that, they hold it over for the next train. Maybe they won't have a reaper special or an ice special going through it. It'll lay here clear till the next day before they get it out of town, where they could've had it ready to go in 20 minutes. QB: Do you think they lose cars in the yard like these too? ES: Well, they lose 'em occasionally and get 'em routed wrong. We return a lot of cars that comes in the wrong route. Got sent in back as an empty and we find out it's a load, or they come in with no bills and they have to find out where they come from and where they're going before we can reroute 'em again and get 'em on their way. QB: How about tagging the trains? Do they still use that same method they used to, when the train comes in, they have to make a tag out on each car and they go out and tag 'em? ES: Well, they tag the cars that has to be tagged. Now, like wheat comes in, and they used to have to tag them, "Hold, inspection." Then they had to go re-tag 'em again to where they wanted 'em to go. QB: After they've been inspected? 27 ES: Yeah. Then they had to re-tag 'em again to where they wanted 'em to go. I don't have too much to do with the tagging procedure out of the yard, but I think the only thing they tag is a car that's been diverted, or some come in that doesn't have tags that has to be tagged to show where they go. But other than that, I don't think they have to tag it. They don't take no seal counts anymore. They don't check the seals on the cars. They send their [unintelligible] checks. If there's seal broke, they reseal it. But they don't take no seal records at all. Only ones that we take is ones at Second Street on the cars that's coming in there and going out in the town tracks, and actually we check those, see if they've been broke or something. QB: Like you said, it's interesting. There's very few cars now that's inspected in the yards? ES: Well, they've got car inspectors that's supposed to inspect 'em, but I mean as far as the seals is concerned. QB: I meant in regards to the wheat. ES: Oh, no, they don't inspect not even a third of what they did last year since they raised the price. QB: What makes me decide on what cars they inspect and which ones they don't? ES: Well, that's according to the shipper. If the shippers says waive inspection, like going to Farmers Grain, they let it go to Farmer Grain without an inspection. The way I understand it, Farmers Grain gets the inspectors to check it there at a cheaper price. Then it's ready to go again, see. If they decide they're gonna ship 28 it out, then when they have it billed, they say waive inspection again, and you ship it direct to the people it's going to. QB: Do they have the cars that had the—I know they're hauling a lot of wheat by truck now. Do they have the amount of tonnage on wheat coming in that they used to? Is about the same, or more, or less? ES: I think they're having about as much tonnage, as far as tonnage is concerned, 'cause the cars are bigger. The trucks does haul a lot, but I don't think the railroad blocked that much to the trucks, what they hauled. QB: Most of them still probably hauled by rail, huh? ES: I think most of it is hauled by rail. Farmers Grain, like I say, I think they're about the only ones. Maybe Globe gets some, I don't know. But Farmers Grain's got about the best place from a load with a truck. QB: Yeah, they pick the truck right up, don't they? ES: Yeah, they've got it all set where—well, they can do the same way with cars. Farmers Grain can unload a hundred cars a day, but most of these others around 20, 25. Globe and Ogden Flour. QB: Oh, Farmers can unload a lot more. ES: Oh yeah, they can unload 'em fast. They can pick them up and dump them. They can turn the car right out. QB: You think that Globe and some of these others will follow suit and get the equipment? ES: Well, I don't know. I mean, if they can get 25 through a day, why, that's doing pretty good, you know. Like I say, Farmers stores more, I think, because Globe 29 and them, you know, matter of fact, there's flour and stuff. I don't think Farmers does. I don't know if they do or not. I think there's more storage and that. Selling the carload now, like I say, I didn't know that much about it. It's quite a deal. I mean, looks like they're trying to mess up Ogden though as a railroad center, you know, is the way it looks to me. But I mean, everybody looks as the same way around here. I don't know what's going to come of this place. QB: It's declining, isn't it? ES: It is. Everything. QB: Well, how about the government? Now, you worked in quite a few jobs in the freight office and worked a lot of these government shipments. Do they still have about the same amount of government shipments they used to? ES: Oh, no, the government has it way down, what's shipping and what they're receiving. In fact, they have even cut back now. 'Cause they used to have two switches in on a day, and then you used to have one on an afternoon and one on night. They got one switch in. They switch all the stuff that's taken out to 'em and then switch all this stuff back down to the flash yards that's a-goin' out, and that's it. Eight hours is what they work. They don't get it down to you in time, why, it don't go out that day. QB: 'Course, you work afternoons part of the time, don't you? ES: Well, I work afternoons in the freight office and work day as a secretary. QB: John, he still keep you busy down there? ES: Oh, he does pretty good for an old man. Yeah, he does pretty good. QB: He keeps everybody busy down there to make sure you're— 30 ES: Yeah, well, it's just him and I. QB: Is there only two of you? ES: He's got one side of the office and I got the other. QB: You are the only two there at night now? ES: Yeah, except Monday. Then him and I in the [unintelligible]. I'm utility on Mondays and just had [unintelligible] out there. But the other the other nights there's just two of us there. QB: How many clerks do they have in the daytime, approximately? ES: Two, four, seven, eight, nine... About 10. That's including the chief clerk. No, they got more than that. Ten, they've got two, four, five… 15. That's including the chief clerk. QB: Fifteen and just a couple on afternoons. Midnight's— ES: One. QB: One on midnight. ES: We've got about 18 or 19 men. It works out well. QB: It used to be three or four times that many. ES: We had that—well, like I say, when we had 1532s and that on, we had two men on that, then we had the comptometer operator that worked until six o'clock. They had an LCL clerk on, OS&D [over, short, and damaged] clerk on, plus the assistant chief clerk, the bill clerk, and the diversion clerk. QB: Don't they have any diversion clerks anymore? ES: They got one from one till nine. QB: How about the car loading clerks? 31 ES: They got one on days and one on afternoons. QB: Then the, let's see, what do they call that job that Walt Woolsey used to have, Bill West? ES: The merge clerk. QB: The merge clerk. They still have that out there? ES: Yeah, they got one and one assistant. Right after the war, they had three assistants. QB: Then the OS&D clerk, do they still have that? ES: I don't know. Well, they've got the claim clerk's helper now, which was on there before, but they had an OS&D man on there, too. That's gone. QB: Let's see, remember when Bill Cross was there? ES: John Morrison [unintelligible,] and then the OS&D was what Lloyd Lawrence worked. QB: Yes, Lloyd Lawrence. ES: See, and now they've got a back room lieutenant and janitor. He does both jobs, see. They done away with the back room job, and then they end up putting it back as a back room job and a janitor. They've done completely away with the compounder operator they had on base. QB: They have that no longer? ES: That's no longer, it's gone by the wayside. QB: Who does that type of work? ES: Everybody that's got something to extend. QB: They have to just learn how to extend 'em? 32 ES: Yeah, you have to do your own extending. That kicked around pretty good. QB: We really have, when you get to thinking about it. It's kind of unbelievable the amount of— ES: Well, it is. When I hired out for the railroad, I was 535, and they was locked below me. Now, I don't think on the roster they got 300. I'm up in 'round 200 or a little less. QB: I see. Well, is there much bumping going on like there used to be, because they've cut down so much? ES: Well, it's been a lot of it. Like in the our department, I've been real fortunate. I rode the tail end of the seniority roster in there for years. There's one younger than me now, but nobody wants the job. But other than that, I've rode the bottom for I don't know how many years. QB: I guess you are close to bottom in there. ES: Yeah, and Catherine Hughes is next. She's 44, so she would work 44. QB: Forty-four date. At least you're hanging on. It seems like 22 years seniority and you're next to the lowest on the totem pole, that's... ES: Yeah, that's getting down pretty low. Like I say, I've been fortunate in the freight office, because last year they cut jobs. There was guys older than me, but they didn't want the job. QB: They didn't want your particular job. ES: Didn't like my relief jobs. QB: So, what did they do? Where'd they go? 33 ES: Well, Frank Horspool, he, just this last year, well he got bumped off of a bill job, so he went back to the auditor's office. QB: They still have the auditors office? ES: Yeah, that's under OUR&D. But I mean, UP pays 'em, but it's still under the OUR&D. We still have seniority there. Same way with the ticket office. Bill Cook runs the auditor's office. QB: The ticket office is this under OUR&D too? ES: No, I don't think so. I think that's just UP. It could be under the OUR&D, I think. Well, it still coincides with same as us. We're working for the UP, they pay us. We do UP and SP work both. QB: What do they do about the payroll now? Do they have a payroll here? ES: Pocatello. Pocatello and Omaha, of course. Timekeeper here's in Pocatello. QB: When you get paid out of Pocatello? ES: Our check is stamped from Omaha. We get 'em... QB: You know, as I recall, when I was down there, you get paid on the 10th and 25th. I guess that's still— ES: It's still the same thing. If the 25th falls on Saturday or Sunday, we get paint on Friday. They can't pay on Saturday or Sunday. QB: It's still the same way. ES: Same way. We pay everybody in the freight office now, except the yard office and the ticket office and the baggage room. We pay everyone else out of the freight office. QB: Do you still pay the trainmen? 34 ES: Yeah. They took that away for a while, but we got it all back now. Switchmen, enginemen, and all. QB: 'Course, that don't involve an extra job, it's just... ES: No, just extra work for the guy when you're there on payday. With two men with our work [and] the other work, why, it keeps you hustling. You know, jumping up and down. QB: Well, if the freight office isn't open at midnight— ES: Well, we got one midnight. QB: Oh, you said there is one, that's right. So, they can get paid 24 hours a day, can't they? ES: Yeah, it's open 24 hours a day. QB: Talk about when they changed the OUR&D and went to UP and SP. You know, part of 'em hired out to the SP and part of 'em hired out to the UP. You're working for the UP; do you think you made a wise choice there, or do you wish you had gone to the SP? ES: Well, I think that I'm still in a good position that I would be in the SP. The reason I went to the UP, if I was going to get transferred, I'd rather go east and south than west, preferably east. But most of the young guys went to the SP. I could hold better jobs in the SP with my seniority. QB: You'd have better seniority at the SP then, huh? ES: Yeah. They haven't got as many men as we got, but I would have had better seniority for the amount of men they got. 35 QB: I understand that they only took say about one third went to the SP and two thirds of the UP, is that right? ES: Yeah, something like that. Well, like I say, I don't know which would be the best. You can tell better when things shape up, and when '73 comes would be the best time to know which way we went the best. A lot of them says they wish they'd've went to the SP, and the ones at the SP don't know whether they like it or not. QB: I want to ask you some things about the union. We got to turn this tape over. ES: Okay. [Recording stops] [Recording resumes] QB: Well, in the last tape we've been talking about some of the changes [that] have taken place and some of the jobs they've eliminated. How do you feel about the union down at the railroad? Do you feel like they're doing a good job, or do you think they're just there collecting their money and not doing too much, or what? ES: Well, I really don't know what the reason is. I don't know whether their hands are tied or what the story is, but the railroads seem to do whatever they want to do. I always thought that there had to be a certain loss of revenue or tonnage they ship before they could cut off anybody, and they seem now, if they want to cut 'em off, they cut 'em off. Well, like this last strike, there are seven jobs out in the yard office they haven't even put back. QB: There's seven? ES: Yeah, and we've got all these people on the guarantee. Why shouldn't they cover them back instead of paying 'em, letting them stay home? 36 QB: Well, this is true. Why don't the unions do anything about it? ES: That's one of the things I don't know. I really don't really know that much about it. When the union meetings are held, that's my day to work nights. I never get to the union meetings, which is a bad thing. You can't lay off to go. Like I say, there's not enough people. They belong to the union, and yet they just go along with whatever happens. I think the biggest mistake, that the employees all theirself did, [was] when they put this closed shop and made everybody belong to the union. I think that was the biggest mistake they ever made for the simple reason now if they don't belong to the union, they can fire 'em. I think that gives the unions a little leeway. They get the money, we'll worry about you later. Like I say, if you're getting $100,000 a year, you're eating good, high off of the hog, and like I say, I don't know that the railroad would buy off the big wigs, but they could. It's been known, it's been done with other things, to get 'em to side in with thataway. We get a little raise, they give something that we didn't want to lose away, which hurts us in the long run. Now, I don't, like I say, I'm not that much up on the union. I believe working your job, whatever job it is or whatever it is to do, as long as you're there at work, whether it's eight hours or 10. Work. I don't mean kill yourself, but do your work and do your job the best you can. QB: I remember Ed, he was quite a worker down there. ES: I don't have to have a boss that would sit on top of me to see that I'm going to work. In fact, I do better if they keep their mouth shut and let me think that I'm 37 doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't need the union to hold my job, I've always been able to hold a job by working and doing my job. I've worked in a lot of places there was never a union, and I can always go back and go to work. Maybe not so much since I'm older, but I mean, when I was around in that age bracket where I wanted to change jobs, I didn't have to worry about going back to the place I left to go to work. I've had several jobs in Utah since I've been here, and I think I could go back to work for any of 'em if I wanted to. I know [unintelligible] the service station where I worked for quite a while. But like I say, I think the union is good, because if you didn't have the union, a lot of these supervisors and stuff would bring their own children in and set 'em right in ahead of you, whether they did the work or not. QB: It wouldn't matter whether you have any seniority or not, would it? ES: Whether you had seniority or not. I think seniority is a good deal. It hurts the young guy. I mean, it hurts you when you get up say like 20 years. Sometimes you get on a job and don't get a chance to get off of it, even if you're old. But the older guy gets on a job, he's tied to it because there's not that much circulation anymore of jobs going up and down that you can get off from. But it has good points and bad points. Like I say, they run seniority. Sometimes a guy that's older gets the job that doesn't know as much about it as the younger guy, and that could go either way. I still think that when they made the closed shop, they really just forced union's concerns, because the union knowed that they was going to get their money and know that everybody that's working's going to pay 'em or they won't work. 38 QB: What are the union wages now? Or, excuse me, the union dues? ES: [Speaking at same time] You mean the union dues? It went from $6.50, after this last raise we had, to $11. QB: You got to raise and the union dues raised also? ES: They did. The union dues raised $4.90. $11 or more. QB: That's 75% increase. ES: Yeah, that's quite an increase. QB: You didn't get that in your wages? ES: No, and you have nothing to say about it. It's just like if you could have to buy a loaf of bread that say a dollar, if you want it, you pay it. If you want to work, you pay the $11. There's no two ways about it, you gotta pay it, you know. QB: Is there many, you know...? ES: Well, everybody thought it was quite enormous, you know, to jump up that far. $11, I don't know if too many people has to pay that much in dues to hold their job. QB: It seems to appear to me that's quite a jump all at once. ES: Well, I do too, because you look over the years that we have had it, and it takes one raise to jump it up four and a half. Now, I don't remember what it was. I've belonged to it since 1945. I put a lot of money in there. I mean, it hasn't been $11 all the time, but you put a lot in there, you get a $300 insurance policy when you die. I think that's pretty high insurance. But like I say, the closed shop I think kind of hurt the union a little bit. I mean, the guys in the union. QB: Yeah, the employees. 39 ES: The employees. The big shots, well, they're still getting their money. Like I say, I don't know. Like we've got a general chairman here, but the only thing he can do is go to the guy they got in Salt Lake. QB: Who's the general chairman now? It used to be Lloyd Murdock. ES: Deryl Fielding, since Lloyd retired. QB: Oh, he's taking Lloyd's job. ES: Yes, and he does the best he can. Like I say, his hands is tied too. He's got to get the authority from the guy down in Salt Lake. He had to be out of town. Well, they had a guy in Portland. Now, I don't know which one's the high stuff, but they segregate 'em. Now they take care of several places, instead of just—like we used to have Lloyd Murdock here that he was the high man on the totem pole. He went from here to Cincinnati, you know, of the deals that we had. I've never put a time card in. I've ever had to go to an investigation of that. So, I really had no call for the union. QB: Do think there's been very many people who've put these time cards in with a time card and somebody never got their money? ES: Well, I think some of 'em did, and there's a lot of them that don't go in. Now they've got a rule with the UP, I understand. If a guy's on vacation, they don't have to even fill the job. Now, that's one of the things that was taken away when we went to the UP. Like I say, there's a lot of things. We had that escalator thing for when things, the groceries and stuff went higher— QB: Cost of living? 40 ES: Cost of living. Well, we lost that off of the bat here several years ago, which I think would have been better than a lot of raises we got, the way things just went up. But like I say, they give some, lose some along the way. So, I really don't know. Now, just like this last strike we got that everybody's hollering about. Now, all of us guys were just shoved off of the job. We weren't on strike, the clerks. There were no picket lines. Some worked. The chief clerks worked, besides the chief clerk, the cashier and whoever they wanted to work, they worked. Great clerks and that. Then they push us out, and we're supposed to be guaranteed employees, have our wages for five years. But they say now they don't know whether they can get our wages for us or not on account of the strike, and we weren't on strike. So, like I say, what's the guarantee? What are you going to expect when you get five years in? QB: There's always something that comes up that... ES: That they haven't got covered, you know. QB: The exception to the rule or something. ES: Yeah. Like I say they had no picket line, so we could've all went to work. The SP was off about one week. Well, they kept working, but yet they shoved us out, you know. In other words, they locked the door. QB: Well, how many days were you out? ES: I lost 13 working days. QB: Well, did part of you go down there, or part of them go down, part of them stay home? 41 ES: Well, now like the auditor's office for the most time, they wouldn't even let some of our guys bump over there. They've got claim cards in on them. Chuck Mulberry went over. They wouldn't let him work, bump a job. Sent 'em letters that they couldn't even bump. Eric Wells went over, he had worked holdouts over, so they let him go with the bump. Now, Earl Dabb's been over since last year working in the auditor's office. He wanted to bump a guy, and I understand that he helped the guy get his reports out in the month, and the guy was younger, but they wouldn't let Earl Dabb bump. QB: For what reason? ES: Well, said he wasn't qualified. Burt Taylor went over, which has been the assistant agent. He's drawing those wages now, he's in the claim department, but he still draws assistant agents' pay. They wouldn't let him bump without breaking in. A guy that's been an assistant agent should know a little bit about what's going on. I mean, every job has got different angles. He should have the authority to bump, you know, when you're that old. He's been there 40 years or better. He's older than Johnny Vaughn; Johnny Vaughn's been there around 40 years or better, so he's older than him. But he couldn't bump. Bill West couldn't bump. QB: They all tried to go there and bump. ES: Yeah, Bill West. There was no use. Me and Katherine, when the other girl that's younger than I am, well, we never went locally. Howard Chamberlain went down, he couldn't bump. But Chuck Mulberry was older than any of them, except Bert Taylor, and they wouldn't let any of 'em bump in there. But like I say, everybody's got their thing. 42 QB: There's quite a few feelings because of that? ES: Oh yeah, there's a lot of hard feelings, and the people despise the company now, you know, for the way it worked on the situation. There's a lot of hard feelings. Me, like I say, I didn't have too much to worry about. Most of the guys, all their wives worked anyway, which is beside the point. I mean, a lot them hates to see you've got your wife working and theirs not, because they say, "Well, you can get by anyway," which is true. But like I tell 'em all, and I have told 'em all, they could've got their wife to work too. QB: 'Course, that's really not the point, is it? ES: No. The point is that you're seniority ain't worth a dime if they don't want you on the job. QB: Well, who decides? Who decided who was to work? ES: Well, Bill Cooksome's the one that told 'em down there that they couldn't bump. He's the auditor. In our office, I guess Frank Verhall is the one who told 'em, and Red Bills told him who was going to work. But Verhall designated the ones that was gonna work. Like I say, I can see where the chief clerk would work, but if we're on strike, I say nobody works. But we weren't on strike, actually, you know. Then the first day the strike was over, on a Monday I think it was that they announced it on TV, the SB was back to work. Me, I went back the 7th. They called 'em back on the 5th. LS: Thursday. ES: Thursday the 5th, but that happened to be my day off, which is beside the point again. But they should’ve called 'em back no later than Tuesday, when the strike 43 was over Monday. Monday, the afternoon shift could've easily went to work, which I would have worked. But instead of that, the assistant chief clerk and Bert Taylor, they call him in as the bill clerk, and they done the work. That's the points that I can see and that I don't think is fair for the UP, or if it was Red Bills himself, or whoever it was. Regardless of what business they was, the regular guys should've been back if the rest of 'em were off strike. Well, like I say, I may have funny opinions, but when things happen, I tell 'em what I think, whether that's the way the union would tell 'em or whether it's the way I would tell 'em. But just the same incident happened, oh, quite a few years ago when I worked at the freight office on 1532s. They was younger ones than me, Morris Law for one, when we was working down there, and I was on the relief job, but he was on the regular job. He worked 16 hours one day, when I'm eight hours overtime. I only worked eight hours, which I could have worked the 16 the same. But I was on a relief job, they said I had no job. I contend that it's still a job. If it's a relief job, you still got a job. The company’s a-payin’ me, not the union. QB: That's right, that's some kind of a job. ES: And that's the contention they use. They don't use that now, but I mean they did at that time, and the union didn't do nothing about me getting the extra pay. Which, like I say, I don't want 'em to pay me, only for what my job calls for, unless I actually work. But I don't like for—they could at least ask if you'll [go to work], and then you can tell 'em one way or the other. 44 But I mean, that goes on and on, but that works all over, it's not only in the freight office or anyplace else. If you happen to be on the right track, why, you come out a lot better. They don't seem to be knowing they can stop it or do it. Just like Burt Taylor was talking to me last night. While I was off hurt last October, they sent a younger guy out to the stop yards which didn't even know it. He tells me now that the union told him he's gonna get paid for it, for the days that I was off [and] they sent the younger guy out there. Which they all was younger, but he was the guy that was in time for it. But like I say, I've never filed a claim since I've been to the railroad. QB: Do you think there's more claims filed now than there has been in the past? ES: No, I don't really think so. I think it's about the same clan that does all the crying anyway, you know. I just can't see raising that much Cain. You cause a lot of hard feelings too from the higher-ups, and they've got ways of getting even too. You know, it's just one of those things. QB: They can get back at you some way or another, so why do you do something they don't like? ES: I think the unions are good, but I don't know what to think really, whether they're working for the guys that's getting the $100,000 a year or for the guys that’s down there that's trying to keep working. That's the point I get at, I really don't know. But like I say, a lot of it is that the people don't back the union anyway. We've got a lot people in the union right now, if they had a picket line, would break their neck to get in there to go to work. QB: Go right through the line. 45 ES: That's right. We had 'em to do it when the clerks were out. I can't see that. You either are or you aren't. If you're with 'em, why, you do as they do. If you're not with them, why, I don't see no use to belong. QB: Well, do you think the employees down there have lost a lot of confidence in the union in general? ES: Oh, yes, I really think so. Yeah, and there's a lot of 'em belongs just for the simple reason they're forced. QB: They have to belong whether they want to or not. ES: You've got to belong on this closed shop, you have no choice. I think that's true of a lot 'em that they would never belong if it wasn't forced. QB: Do you think maybe that the employees have a lot of claims that they could file, but they think "Well, there's no sense in filing anyway because nothing will be done?" ES: Oh, I imagine there's quite a few that think that way. Like I say, when you're the youngest one in an office, you don't worry too much about claims because they can't run around you too often, you know. They ain't nobody, unless they run out of employees then come back to you. There's no way you can say. I mean, I guess the union's just done a lot of good. If it wasn't for the unions, they'd get rid of all of us old guys and get young ones. That's true. You can see that anywhere, you know. They eventually push the older ones out. Like I say, they're not going to have to push me out. When it gets time for me to go, I'm gone. QB: You're gonna go when you get retirement. 46 ES: If Mama has to work until I croak. Dad's gonna rest, come the place where he goes. Might have a hard trip. I heard a pretty good thing on that yesterday. Wardle's wife was telling us yesterday, day before yesterday I guess it was. She says, "You know what I'm gonna do when I die and St. Peter calls me up to the gate? I'm going to get on that gate and start swinging back and forth, back and forth." When he says, "Which way you're going?" She says, "I'm goin' in." [Laughs] So, I think that's a good idea. I think I'll try that way too. I don't really know. QB: Well, how do you feel about the wages down there and the fringe benefits in comparison to other industries? ES: Well, with the government, they're under 'em. QB: The railroads, you mean. ES: The railroads are way under the government's people who are working. Well, just take my wife for instance. Now, I’ll have 26 years in in October, she'll have eight in September. She may be smarter than me—she's working for the government, I guess she is—but, like I say, I've got one of the highest rates afforded my jobs that they've got down there. Yet, she makes more money than I do. Where I make $7,000, she makes better than $9,000. I think for that much difference, and I can't see looking at a letter and say, "Well, it goes to route seven," look at another letter, say it goes over here route one, is any different than me filling a car to New York City, ordering it out by Council Plus, putting the rates on it, putting the transit on it and who it's going to and who its from. I'm getting all that, 47 the car number on it right, and all that. I can't see where that's any more difficult than doing those letters. QB: The way you're putting it, it sounds like what you're doing is more difficult than what she's doing, yet you get less pay. ES: Well, that's true. I mean, and for the responsibility I got. You know, if I send a car wrong, which you know that there's a lot of charges to the railroad to get it back. If it happens to be perishable goods, it costs them a lot of money in damage. I mean, so you've got to keep pretty well up on. Just like when we was working the baggage room, you had to know which direction you was sending the mail, and you should know all the stations along the route. You know, which would be closest to the bigger station it was going to. But like I say, I still think that there's a lot of underpaid people and a lot of overpaid ones also. I think we've got too many supervisors for one thing, you know. QB: Too many supervisors down there for the amount of employees? ES: I mean, not only for down here, but I mean at the higher-ups as you go. QB: Oh, I see. ES: I think that that's what they're running away with, this [unintelligible] cost 'em a lot money. The railroad stop, right? Like I say, there again, it's their business, they should know how to run it. Somebody should, unless they got some guy that's trying to make a name for himself and "Hooray for me and to hell with the other guy." 48 QB: Well, I've heard constant cry at the railroad employees too in regards to vacation, the way it's handled down at the railroad in comparison with, say, some of these government installations. ES: Well, that's true too, but Frank Verhall made a good deal for us in the freight office. You know how it used to be, the oldest guy'd take all his vacation, the next oldest guy take his, in time it got down to the peon, there was nothing left. His vacation two thirds the time was over before he got to say when he wanted to, because he was going in January or February. Frank Verhall made that change real good, because a lot of those old guys would take the best months, and before they got to it, or got by it, they was changing to some other month, then that spot was vacant, and you'd already had yours in February or March and there was nothing you could do about it. You couldn't take it then. But now, they have to split it up. They get their first choice, still the oldest guy goes, but he can only take two weeks or three weeks or one week, and then he don't get the other until it goes clear around. Everybody gets on there and gets these vacations. QB: In other words, if he has four weeks vacation coming, he wants to take two— ES: He has to take three and one, or two and two. Or he could take all four of them at one time if he wants. Then it goes to the next guy. If he wants to take two weeks, then he gets a second choice, but he don't get that until the last peon has got his vacation in there. QB: Well, what I meant, Ed, is say you've got four weeks vacation coming and you decide to take two weeks one time and two weeks the next. What you're saying 49 then is, he can put down his choice for two weeks, but before he puts the second two weeks down, it has to go all the way through. ES: It has to go all the way through the trade office. QB: Well that sounds like that's a better deal for the younger ones. ES: Well, it's a lot better deal. Now, like this year, I got in June, which is pretty good. I mean, I've always got that in. Like four years ago, I took it in May. I only took three weeks in June. But when it comes around the second time, well I took the first vacancy in the fall, like November. I've got one week in November, which it didn't make no difference to me when I took the last week, for the simple reason that I'd already had the vacation. I wanted to go back east, and I had plans made, so it worked out real good. But usually I can get May or June—[sounds of children playing in background] yeah, them kids [are making] a lot of noise down on that pool table—to take a trip, you know, when you want to split it. Now, like next year, I'm not going anywhere, so I'm gonna split it two and two. Then if we wanna go someplace, well Mama can usually get her vacation for near any time she knows a little ahead of time. QB: That makes it a lot better that way, doesn't it? ES: Oh, yeah. Well, see it— QB: So you can get it together. ES: Like they wanted me to kinda change my [unintelligible] after I already had it. I said, "I've already got plans. My brothers and sisters knows when I'm coming back there. I just can't see changin' it." I was told that I wouldn't get it then. I said "Well, we'll see." 50 QB: Just because they didn't get their own away, they got kind of huffy about it, huh? ES: Well, one guy did. The other guy did, and just like I told him, I said, "I've got arrangements made. I've got a lot of mileage to travel. I'm leaving on my day off." I'll be back there when it starts, the day it does start. So I says, "All my brothers and sisters have made arrangements to get some of their time off. I think it'd be kind of late in the day for me to cancel my vacation and wire them that I ain't coming." So, I didn't change. QB: Well now, how does this vacation system work? After you've been there so many years, Ed, you get so many weeks, and... ES: You get four off weeks after 20 years. QB: Four weeks after 20 years. ES: Wasn't it? Yeah, three weeks after 15, four weeks, and after five years I think it was two weeks. After 1973, I think we get five weeks, I don't know. QB: Five weeks? ES: Might be indefinite vacation then [laughs]. I don't know. Like I say, most of the changes that the union and railroad worked out come after 1973. QB: I see. Now, how about some of the other fringe benefits, say like sick pay? When I was down there, we got no sick pay. ES: Well, now you get 10 days a year. QB: Ten days a year? ES: And you can save up till 20. Now, like last year, I used all of them, and I think I've used two days this year, so I've got eight days left. QB: Do you think everybody, they're gonna automatically get sick for 10 days? 51 ES: Oh, I think so. I think a lot of 'em do. There's a lot of 'em that don't. I know a few that get sick and take sick leave that never gets knocked off for their sick leave too. But there's a lot of 'em that don't take it, a lot of 'em get some of it, I’ll put it that way. Most of 'em gets part of it. Like I say, it's nice to have 20 days where you could hold it, you know. Even if it could go higher than that, like the government. I still think that's a good thing, because like last year, I was off a month, and I used my sick leave, which they shouldn't've never gave me, because the railroad had to pay me anyway, because I got hurt on their property. But I didn't know that, and after they'd given me the sick leave, why, they wouldn't put it back, and then the railroad just paid me for the rest of the time that I was out. I don't know. There's a lot of pros and cons and all those, you know. I mean, some thinks we got a good deal, some thinks we never got nothing. QB: How about the hospitalization? ES: Well, that's been... We haven't had any trouble with that. We have to lay out to get what it is now, the month we have to pay. But the hospital plan that we had, it's worked real good for us. Like with the railroad hospital, I mean, they got some good doctors and they got some that I don't think is so good. QB: You have to take the doctor of their choice, don't you? ES: No. Now, like I did—with my leg—Swimmer, because he is a bone specialist and that, and I understand he's one of the best in Utah. There's not too many people like him, I mean, as far as a person, but everybody recommends him if you've got something out at your knees or legs or back or neck or whatever it is. Like I say, they've treated me fine. Like I say, with the ones that they got in the hospital clinic 52 down there, the clinic they got, well you can go to any of 'em of your choice, whichever one you want. Like I think they were getting some good doctors, but they don't keep 'em long. I think a lot of 'em goes down there to get acquainted with a lot of people, families, and then they get their business into their business, and they can make more money not being in there at all. It is time consuming. I mean, they usually come down for a couple hours in the morning, a couple of hours in the afternoon. Like I say, they've treated me all right. I've always gotten taken care of when I went there. QB: It's one of the few places that, the railroad employees themselves, where there's no limitation on the amount of medical care you can get. Now, most insurance policies you're— ES: Well, they could take care of their employees, you know, I mean, I have never had no operations or anything like that. Most of mine have been colds, that's been my biggest problem. I've never really been, what you say, real sick. I had the mumps once, and other than that I think that's the only drastic sickness I've ever had other than colds. Since I could go into the doctor, I haven't had to go since only for hurting my leg, and that's the only time I've had to go for two or three years. But like I say, there's something [unintelligible] see down the row of time. Same one, too. Every eight, you got to have a [unintelligible]. QB: They're gonna have a clinic for everything they... ES: But I don't look at it that way. I mean, if you need medical care, I think they could give you just about as good as anybody. 53 QB: Well, let's see now. We've talked about those fringe benefits. There's another fringe benefit, and it probably isn't even a fringe benefit anymore, and that's the railroad pass. ES: There's no pass. They did away with those quite a while back. I mean, when they had done the split, why, like we went to the UP and we had a UP pass, that was the train we'd ride is the UP's. If we wanted to ride the others, well, we had to pay half fare, and then you had to get in order. Same with the SP. Now, like with the SP, when we split and I went to UP, half fare for me and full fare for Mama. She didn't get nothing. Now, I understand that we can get half fare on any railroad [through] Amtrak. QB: 'Course, I guess that doesn't excite you too much, does it? ES: Not really. We don't go that much. Where we do go, it’s so far that it's easier to drive a car than it is to ride the train. I mean, with the changes in riding on a pass. QB: You can actually drive a car cheaper, I'm sure. ES: Yeah, and you got the car with you. QB: Yeah, you can drive the car cheaper, taking your family, [than] you could even riding the train at even half fare. ES: They got a new thing, I understand, that they charge so much for a car, and they put it on a flat car, and they have two or three coaches with these flat cars that they haul. You can take your car to wherever you're going. Now, like with us, say from here to Cincinnati would be a good deal, because we could ride and we wouldn't be a-drivin’ all the time, and yet we'd have our car when we get to where we're going. Even if we had to pay the full price, it'd be just as cheap, I think, to 54 have them to haul your car back there. Because it wouldn't be to drive your car all the way back and stop at motels, you know. It might cost a little more, I don't know. But I understand, or that's what I've heard through the grapevine, that they've got that so much. No matter if it's just one person with the car or you've got a carload, they take that car for that, and you ride in the coach. QB: Well, that's pretty good, isn't it? ES: Oh, I think it would, saving the wear and tear on your car, and then dodging everybody on the freeways and what have you. We've had good luck. We've been back here twice now the last four years, and we've never even had a flat tire. We see a lot of 'em stopped on the road. Then we go to California. Well, we went every year to California when we haven't went back east in the last few years. Next year, we'll stay home, won't go nowhere, unless something comes up we have to. Might take my Mother out to North Ogden or Brigham going on a date. QB: How about railroad retirement? You think that's pretty... ES: Well, I never checked into it, Quinn. I don't think it's as good as the government's. Like I say, they say they're running out of money. Well, what are they going to do if the railroads keep cutting down and there's no employees to pay into it? What's going to be left for the young guys when they gets old? QB: Oh, they say they're running out of retirement fund? ES: Yeah. Well, that's why they can't pay more. They can't let us retire like the government does. Thirty years and 55 years old, or 30 years and 60 years old, 55 you know. I think if the government can do it, they ought to be able to do it for the railroad retirement. QB: Well, I understand that they loaned out for the railroad retirement, that money's loaned out on blue chip stocks and some of these other things. ES: They should be making some money with it, unless the overhead's eating up the profits. QB: You've got too much overhead there, could easily do it. ES: Well, you've been in business, and I've been around it quite a while. The overhead can eat up all the profits. You can get over staff right quick. Now, especially more so nowadays that you got people that don't want to work. They want the money, but they want to just be there to get it. I don't know. I've give up guessing. I figured I got here, got this far along, I'll make it the rest of the way somehow. QB: Make it the rest of the way, huh? Well, I hope the railroad retirement funds don't run out before I get mine. ES: Gee, I still got a little over nine years to go before—I mean to where it says now, I hope they get it down before that nine years is up, the value of retirement. I'd like to say it's 60 years, 30 years at least. QB: You've got nine years to go till you're 65? ES: Yes. A little over nine years, it'll be nine years from January, and I'm going to be gone. QB: Gosh Ed, you don't look that old. You look a lot younger than what you... 56 ES: Well, might not look that old, sometimes I feel that old. But like I say, if they get it down to 60 years and 30 years service, why, I'll get out then. I'm hoping they can get it down that far if they can't get it to 55. Well, if they got it 55, why, I wouldn't have my 30 years anyway, unless I wanted to add my service time on. QB: Well, you can do that. ES: Yeah, I can do that, but it might cut it down as much as I couldn't afford to stand it, you know. 'Course, you didn't make big money in the Army. $21 a month when I started. That wasn't too good. QB: That wasn't too good at all. ES: No, and actually, when I got out it wasn't that good. I don't know. Like I say, I've made pretty good living. I've got my home paid for and that. We got a new car and a new truck. I don't think the railroad just kept me eatin', you know. Sometimes I got disgusted quite a bit a few times, but since I've changed with the railroad, left the Express—I was steady over at the Express—I've never worked the extra board over about three months, four months at the most, and I've been never cut off in the last few years. But like I say, it's getting worse all the time, but if it gets down to 55 and 30 years, there's a lot of guys that would get out, I think. If you made it 30 to 60, I know there'd be a lot to get out. When a guy gets 60, he starts thinking a little more, you know. It's getting closer to that old last ride you going to take. Then there's a lot of them would stay until they're 90, if they can live that long and stick around. They have got that set up pretty good if they got to get out. After another year or so, they have to get on when they're 65. QB: Oh, they do? 57 ES: Yep, they can't stay after 65 then, which I think is a good thing. Frank Taylor would still be working if they'd let him work. But he had to get out in order to get that extra $70 that they're giving 'em in the pension. If you went over that, why, they took that away from it. But I still think it's a good thing. A lot of people say, "Well, when you get that old, you'll think different. You know, you haven't got nothing to do." Well, I'll find something to do if I live that long. But like I say, that's another story. I ain't that old yet, so we'll call her quits. QB: You know, we've heard a lot of talk about railroad employees featherbedding. Do you think that there's some justification in... ES: Well, like I say, there's good and bad every place. There's good workers and there's workers that's not so good. You can go to the government or any private business there is and find the same thing. It's not only the railroad that... If you go back to Washington, where they got all the wheels, just putting out this stuff and featherbedding, you can find 'em back there doing the same things that everybody else is. There's some's putting out their effort for their money, there's some that's not. I mean, you could find that all over the world, not only in the United States, but Europe or anyplace else. There are some that will put out for what they're getting, and there's others that never will. You're never going to change is you're gonna get good and bad with everything. Unless you runnin' your own business and I guess you could fire 'em if you wanted to. QB: Well, they had quite a bit of trouble, you know, with the firemen. ES: Oh, yes. 58 QB: 'Course, the unions and the employees themselves wanted to keep the firemen off, or the management wanted to eliminate the firemen. ES: Yeah. Well, like there again, I've seen a lot of those guys that wasn't doing nothing, and then on these diesels, I don't see too much for them to do, myself. I don't know, I never run an engine. But I still say they should have 'em on these big trains they're pulling, the passenger trains, to help watch in case something happens to the engineer. Because the time they get up engineers on these passenger trains, they're old men. You can fall over dead even if you're young, but the chances are you'll fall over quicker when you're old than you do when you are young. I still say they should need that, and I still think that they need ‘em ‘round the yards on switching, when they're switching around where these people are, live trains where there's men to work. If he would keep his eye on the outside of watching the people that's out there, instead of reading the paper or going to sleep. But like there's pro and con in all of it. If they got a brakeman up there like they do with the SB, running brakeman, well he's separate with the engineer if something goes wrong, you know. He could watch him, because they have been known to drop dead. QB: 'Course, don't they have these, what do they call 'em, these dead men— ES: Oh, dead men brakes, but what if you died and your foot slipped off of it? I think that's the way it operates, or if you just held it where it was at. Because, you know, you've read where people's died sitting in a chair, never moved. Or, if he just leaned over inside of the cab once they—what if he didn't push it down or 59 didn't take his foot off from it? So, like I say, there's so many things that [unintelligible] just argue. Like I say, I've never run an engine in my life. I've been in a few of 'em when they were shovelin' coal in 'em, but I don't know whether it's good or bad. QB: Well Ed, would you recommend a young man hiring out at the railroad? ES: No. I don't see no future in it for a young man. I mean, it would take him so long before he could get a job—you know, a steady job—he'd be an old man before he could make a living. If you're gonna raise a family, you usually start on it there, and the way I've seen it in the last few years, it's going downhill instead of uphill. QB: Constantly going downhill? ES: Oh, yes. We've lost many employees. When you can see that, I mean, you could see it yourself. You can walk in where you used to see a big office, and they got us a little two by four room, really. QB: Just got a little corner for you to work in now? ES: That's right. They're mechanizing everything now, which is not going to take as many employees. The section gangs, they do it all with machinery now. They don't need as much help as they did have to have when the guys were driving the spikes and lifting the rail and what have you. The clerks, they've done away with so much work, and then with all these computers they're getting now, they're gonna get rid of more as soon as they get it going. QB: We got some new methods they are going to employ in the railroads to probably cut off more people? 60 ES: Oh, yes, I think. I understand in Los Angeles they already got, in these bigger stations, you know, 'cause it's a costly thing that they can wave bills and everything over the machine. Rate 'em and all, and they got these code numbers that goes with 'em. QB: These automatically rate 'em and everything, huh? ES: Rate 'em and route 'em too. You got a route code that takes 'em whichever way they're going, you know. If they get the codes all down pat and get them in these machines, there wouldn't be no reason why they couldn't rate it. Just like they show you these cars, where the car's at, where it's been, if it's empty or loaded or what's in it, you know. I mean, I've heard a lot of rumors. Like I say, you hear anything you want to hear. Somebody's always got an answer for it, that they will have machines that will rate 'em and send 'em right on through. You know what that means, if they rate 'em: your rate clerk's gone. The bill clerk's gone. Your freight bill clerk's gone. They can divert 'em through these machines too, I presume, if they get 'em going, you know. So, there'd be your diversion clerk. All you're going to need [is] the flagman out there, flagging by as they go by. I don't know, like I say, there's a lot of change, and everything is changing. But what I wonder about is how these young kids, my grandkids, is gonna fare. What are they gonna be doing? Loafing 24 hours a day? Government pay 'em or somebody pay 'em to stay home? It don't make sense. Like, I try to get my kids all to go to school [and] keep going. Like this baby now, I want him to get through high school and go to college, you know. At least you can learn how to pick up 61 paper or something like that. If you've got a college education, that's about the size of it anymore, if you don't have a degree in something. I don't know. QB: This is certainly true. It looks to me like maybe the railroad itself isn't a dying industry, because they are hauling more freight, more merchandise, but as far as the employment is concerned, it looks like it's a dying industry for employees. ES: Well, like I say, it's everything. They're getting machinery. All these big outfits are going to foreign countries because they got to pay a lot of tax and they go over there. We fight the wars for 'em to keep 'em in business over there. They get over there and get in trouble and the little trouble starts over there, well, we got to send our armies over to protect their money and their company. What I say, if they want to run a business over there, that's fine. They charge enough tax money, they pay the guys that's loafing over here, to pay them their wages for loafing over here. A lot of 'em will come back and do their business over here instead of taking it. Now, like last night—I don't know whether it was last it was in the paper, where they're building a lot factories down in Mexico. Where they can pay them down there a few pesos, they gotta pay us dollars, you know. But [unintelligible] factory stuff, and then send it back over here for us to buy. I still say that they're gonna have to put a lot of charges on 'em in order to keep 'em from doing it, because they can get that stuff cheaper there. They get it done for less than a third of what we do it for. I think they're gonna have to do something in stopping this import stuff. QB: Well, in fact I heard on television here just a few days ago, they making an awful lot of trousers and shirts and things over in Taiwan, and one of the union 62 representatives that was on the news said, "How can we possibly compete against something like this where they're paying their employees over there six cents an hour? We just can't stay in the market, can't stay in the ball field because of the cheap labor." ES: Well, Japan's the same way. Look how much stuff we get from Japan. Anything you want you get. Like a lot of these American companies on these TVs, everything's put together and made over there except two or three little tubes, and they come back and stick a couple little tubes in it, "It's American made." And it's not. QB: All right, so maybe as far as the railroad industry is concerned— ES: Oh, well, it's not only the railroads. It's everything. It's everything. I mean trucks, why, they can't mechanize them too much more than what they are, unless they can run them down the road without a driver. I think the whole situation is unemployment. If the poor people can work, they'll spend their money. I haven't seen one yet; I'm no different than anybody else. All through my life, I mean, I never had it where I've got as much as I got now, let's put it that way. When I was born in '16, well, there was a war then. In the 30s, it was a Depression. Like I see it now, it's damn near the Depression right now, because you're making a lot more money than they was in the 30s, but it costs a whole lot more to live. QB: That's right, and the employment picture— ES: —Is rough right now. QB: Every time they cut jobs off the railroad, I don't think they put it in the paper, do they? 63 ES: Oh, no. No, they don't put that in there. No, and the same way, like they put in the paper, they're hiring a lot out [at] Hill Field. When it boils down to it, they've got enough people out there, they change around and put 'em on these jobs that they've put enough, and they actually haven't put on any. QB: If you look at the overall picture of the railroad then, they used to have LCL, lessened car load, and they completely cut that out, which eliminated several hundred employees. They used to have a baggage room, and now the airplane's taken over the mail, more or less. ES: Trucks. Mail's in trucks. QB: In trucks. Therefore, it's eliminated many employees there. The passenger service has been practically eliminated, so therefore that's cut out the laundry. ES: The laundry commissaries. QB: The commissaries, and of course the... ES: Red caps? QB: Red caps. ES: All them disappeared. QB: That service the trains, and the— ES: The Express don't run on the passenger train. See, it's actually all theirs is their service now if you want any service, unless it goes in freight service. QB: That's right, so the Express had been cut out. They used to hire several hundred icemen. ES: That's cut out. QB: That's cut out. 64 ES: They're using mechanical reapers. QB: They're making larger trains now and running 'em straight through, so therefore that cuts out a lot of the... ES: Yard checkers. QB: Yard checkers and a lot of the clerks. ES: The old clerks are gone. All the way around, it's cut, cut, cut. I mean, like I say, it's not only the railroads. The government's lost a lot of help, but the government actually takes better care of their help than the railroads do. They usually can place them someplace, you know. They'll take them from one department to the other around. You know, keep 'em a job till some of the older ones move out and take their pension. They've got it down where a guy 55 years old—there's a lot of 'em out there, Second Street, that's old enough and got enough time to go and get a full pay, much as they'll get when they're 65, but the place won't run without 'em. It's just like the railroad's been. The old guys didn't figure that the place would keep going without 'em. Like I say, in all my time around working any place I've ever worked, I've left several jobs, and the place never hurt a bit, kept right on going. The same way with me, when I leave the railroad, two days after I'm gone, they won't even know I been there. The same way with a lot of those guys, you know, they think it won't operate without 'em. Like I say, you just gotta admit to yourself it'll keep going, because it has for years and it's gonna continue to keep going, regardless of whether I'm here or my children's are working for 'em, if they 65 happen to be a-workin’ for ‘em. When they're gone, it'll still be going. There's always somebody can move in and take your place. QB: Like you said, it was quite interesting to me, what's your grandchildren going to do, you see, with all these jobs eliminated down the railroad, and many other industries are in the same kind of technological squeeze? ES: Oh, they're in the same thing. Just look at that airplane manufacturer. Look at Boeing. What would they do if it wasn't for the government have enough coal to get money to operate on? The airplanes can't even make a go of it. With the government a-helping, they complain about money. That's my theory. I really don't know, unless the government wants to run everything. Just feed you and let you grow until you kick a bucket. Let you work, what have you. QB: I think we're coming into a socialized state here, Ed. ES: Well, I don't know. QB: See, the government has taken over part of the railroad. You say this Amtrak, that's the government operated. ES: Well, they're in the airplane service. You might as well say they're in it, after the deal to get Boeing. Looks like they're some of the railroad with the PC. I think the railroads would like for the government to step in and take a move. They get a little profit out of their money if they got in it, run it their way. I don't know if they could make a go booth, but at least it'd have somebody working, I think. QB: Well, and you're looking forward to, well, I shouldn't say looking forward, but you're kind of keeping an eye on 1973 when you feel that there will be some drastic changes take place. 66 ES: Yeah, I hope that by then that they've got the retirement down low for the guys that's old enough that can get out, you know, and that's got enough time in. Like I say, I wouldn't be old enough that if it wasn't too drastic I could afford to take it, because I'll have 28 years in or better. That wouldn't be quite 30, but if I had to add [unintelligible] entire month, why— QB: If it was attractive enough, you'd do it. ES: I'd do it to get out and let the younger guys work, because that's what's causing all of our trouble, these young kids are not working. Or that's the way I look at it. I mean, maybe it's because I'm older. I think if the kids could work, they'd be out of mischief for at least eight hours of the day. And if they worked hard enough that they'd have to go to bed every night instead of running loose... QB: Well, Ed, I appreciate this interview here, and like I say, we can catalog this in the university libraries and have your posterity listen to it. Right now it may not seem very important to you, but 50 years from now it will be very... ES: Oh, 50 years, maybe I'll come back and see if it's still worth it. QB: [Laughs] Okay, very good. ES: Okay, well I hope somebody can get something out of it and understand what it's all about. 67