The Story Of An Englishman

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Title:     The Story Of An Englishman
Author: Cy Warman [More Titles by Warman]

A young Englishman stood watching a freight train pulling out of a new town, over a new track. A pinch-bar, left carelessly by a section gang, caught in the cylinder-cock rigging and tore it off.

Swearing softly, the driver climbed down and began the nasty work of disconnecting the disabled machinery. He was not a machinist. Not all engine-drivers can put a locomotive together. In fact the best runners are just runners. The Englishman stood by and, when he saw the man fumble his wrench, offered a hand. The driver, with some hesitation, gave him the tools, and in a few minutes the crippled rigging was taken down, nuts replaced, and the rigging passed by the Englishman to the fireman, who threw it up on the rear of the tank.

"Are you a mechanic?" asked the driver.

"Yes, sir," said the Englishman, standing at least a foot above the engineer. "There's a job for me up the road, if I can get there."

"And you're out of tallow?"

The Englishman was not quite sure; but he guessed "tallow" was United States for "money," and said he was short.

"All right," said the engine-driver; "climb on."

The fireman was a Dutchman named Martin, and he made the Englishman comfortable; but the Englishman wanted to work. He wanted to help fire the engine, and Martin showed him how to do it, taking her himself on the hills. When they pulled into the town of E., the Englishman went over to the round-house and the foreman asked him if he had ever "railroaded." He said No, but he was a machinist. "Well, I don't want you," said the foreman, and the Englishman went across to the little eating-stand where the trainmen were having dinner. Martin moved over and made room for the stranger between himself and his engineer.

"What luck?" asked the latter.

"Hard luck," was the answer, and without more talk the men hurried on through the meal.

They had to eat dinner and do an hour's switching in twenty minutes. That is an easy trick when nobody is looking. You arrive, eat dinner, then register in. That is the first the despatcher hears of you at E. You switch twenty minutes and register out. That is the last the despatcher hears of you at E. You switch another twenty minutes and go. That is called stealing time; and may the Manager have mercy on you if you're caught at it, for you've got to make up that last twenty minutes before you hit the next station.

As the engineer dropped a little oil here and there for another dash, the Englishman came up to the engine. He could not bring himself to ask the driver for another ride, and he didn't need to.

"You don't get de jobs?" asked Martin.

"No."

"Vell, dat's all right; you run his railroad some day."

"I don't like the agent here," said the driver; "but if you were up at the other end of the yard, over on the left-hand side, he couldn't see you, and I couldn't see you for the steam from that broken cylinder-cock."

Now they say an Englishman is slow to catch on, but this one was not; and as the engine rattled over the last switch, he climbed into the cab in a cloud of steam. Martin made him welcome again, pointing to a seat on the waste-box. The dead-head took off his coat, folded it carefully, laid it on the box, and reached for the shovel. "Not yet," said Martin, "dare is holes already in de fire; I must get dose yello smoke from de shtack off."

The dead-head leaned from the window, watching the stack burn clear, then Martin gave him the shovel. Half-way up a long, hard hill the pointer on the steam-gauge began to go back. The driver glanced over at Martin, and Martin took the shovel. The dead-head climbed up on the tank and shovelled the coal down into the pit, that was now nearly empty. In a little while they pulled into the town of M.C., Iowa, at the crossing of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. Here the Englishman had to change cars. His destination was on the cross-road, still one hundred and eighteen miles away. The engine-driver took the joint agent to one side, the agent wrote on a small piece of paper, folded it carefully, and gave it to the Englishman. "This may help you," said he; "be quick--they're just pulling out--run!"

Panting, the Englishman threw himself into a way-car that was already making ten miles an hour. The train official unfolded the paper, read it, looked the Englishman over, and said, "All right."

It was nearly night when the train arrived at W., and the dead-head followed the train crew into an unpainted pine hotel, where all hands fell eagerly to work. A man stood behind a little high desk at the door taking money; but when the Englishman offered to pay he said, "Yours is paid fer."

"Not mine; nobody knows me here."

"Then, 'f the devil don't know you better than I do you're lost, young man," said the landlord. "But some one p'inted to you and said, 'I pay fer him.' It ain't a thing to make a noise about. It don't make no difference to me whether it's Tom or Jerry that pays, so long as everybody represents."

"Well, this is a funny country," mused the Englishman, as he strolled over to the shop. Now when he heard the voice of the foreman, with its musical burr, which stamped the man as a Briton from the Highlands, his heart grew glad. The Scotchman listened to the stranger's story without any sign of emotion or even interest; and when he learned that the man had "never railroaded," but had been all his life in the British Government service, he said he could do nothing for him, and walked away.

The young man sat and thought it over, and concluded he would see the master-mechanic. On the following morning he found that official at his desk and told his story. He had just arrived from England with a wife and three children and a few dollars. "That's all right," said the master-mechanic; "I'll give you a job on Monday morning."

This was Saturday, and during the day the first foreman with whom the Englishman had talked wired that if he would return to E. he could find work. The young man showed this wire to the master-mechanic. "I should like to work for you," said he; "you have been very kind to give me employment after the foreman had refused, but my family is near this place. They are two hundred miles or more from here."

"I understand," said the kind-hearted official, "and you'd better go back to E."

The Englishman rubbed his chin and looked out of the window. The train standing at the station and about to pull out would carry him back to the junction, but he made no effort to catch it, and the master-mechanic, seeing this, caught the drift of the young man's mind. "Have you transportation?" he asked. The stranger, smiling, shook his head. Turning to his desk, the master-mechanic wrote a pass to the junction and a telegram requesting transportation over the Iowa Central from the junction to the town of E.

That Sunday the young man told his young wife that the new country was "all right." Everybody trusted everybody else. An official would give a stranger free transportation; a station agent could give you a pass, and even an engine-driver could carry a man without asking permission.

He didn't know that all these men save the master-mechanic had violated the rules of the road and endangered their own positions and the chance of promotion by helping him; but he felt he was among good, kind people, and thanked them just the same.

On Monday morning he went to work in the little shop. In a little while he was one of the trustworthy men employed in the place. "How do you square a locomotive?" he asked the foreman. "Here," said the foreman; "from this point to that."

That was all the Englishman asked. He stretched a line between the given points and went to work.

Two years from this the town of M. offered to donate to the railroad company $47,000 if the new machine shop could be located there, steam up and machinery running, on the first day of January of the following year.

The general master-mechanic entrusted the work of putting in the machinery, after the walls had been built and the place roofed over, to the division master-mechanic, who looked to the local foreman to finish the job in time to win the subsidy.

The best months of the year went by before work was begun. Frost came, and the few men tinkering about were chilled by the autumn winds that were wailing through the shutterless doors and glassless windows. Finally the foreman sent the Englishman to M. to help put up the machinery. He was a new man, and therefore was expected to take signals from the oldest man on the job,--a sort of straw-boss.

The bridge boss--the local head of the wood-workers--found the Englishman gazing about, and the two men talked together. There was no foreman there, but the Englishman thought he ought to work anyway; so he and the wood boss stretched a line for a line-shaft, and while the carpenter's gang put up braces and brackets the Englishman coupled the shaft together, and in a few days it was ready to go up. As the young man worked and whistled away one morning, the boss carpenter came in with a military-looking gentleman, who seemed to own the place. "Where did you come from?" asked the new-comer of the machinist.

"From England, sir."

"Well, anybody could tell that. Where did you come from when you came here?"

"From E."

"Well, sir, can you finish this job and have steam up here on the first of January?"

The Englishman blushed, for he was embarrassed, and glanced at the wood boss. Then, sweeping the almost empty shop with his eye, he said something about a foreman who was in charge of the work. "Damn the foreman," said the stranger; "I'm talking to you."

The young man blushed again, and said he could work twelve or fourteen hours a day for a time if it were necessary, but he didn't like to make any rash promises about the general result.

"Now look here," said the well-dressed man, "I want you to take charge of this job and finish it; employ as many men as you can handle, and blow a whistle here on New Year's morning--do you understand?"

The Englishman thought he did, but he could hardly believe it. He glanced at the wood boss, and the wood boss nodded his head.

"I shall do my best," said the Englishman, taking courage, "but I should like to know who gives these orders."

"I'm the General Manager," said the man; "now get a move on you," and he turned and walked out.

It is not to be supposed that the General Manager saw anything remarkable about the young man, save that he was six feet and had a good face. The fact is, the wood foreman had boomed the Englishman's stock before the Manager saw him.

The path of the Englishman was not strewn with flowers for the next few months. Any number of men who had been on the road when he was in the English navy-yards felt that they ought to have had this little promotion. The local foremen along the line saw in the young Englishman the future foreman of the new shops, and no man went out of his way to help the stranger. But in spite of all obstacles, the shop grew from day to day, from week to week; so that as the old year drew to a close the machinery was getting into place. The young foreman, while a hard worker, was always pleasant in his intercourse with the employees, and in a little while he had hosts of friends. There is always a lot of extra work at the end of a big job, and now when Christmas came there was still much to do. The men worked night and day. The boiler that was to come from Chicago had been expected for some time. Everything was in readiness, and it could be set up in a day; but it did not come. Tracer-letters that had gone after it were followed by telegrams; finally it was located in a wreck out in a cornfield in Illinois on the last day of the year.

A great many of the officials were away, and the service was generally demoralized during the holidays, so that the appropriation for which the Englishman was working at M. had for the moment been forgotten; the shops were completed, the machinery was in, but there was no boiler to boil water to make steam.

That night, when the people of M. were watching the old year out and the new year in, the young Englishman with a force of men was wrecking the pump-house down by the station. The little upright boiler was torn out and placed in the machine shops, and with it a little engine was driven that turned the long line-shaft.

At dawn they ran a long pipe through the roof, screwed a locomotive whistle on the top of it, and at six o'clock on New Year's morning the new whistle on the new shops at M. in Iowa, blew in the new year. Incidentally, it blew the town in for $47,000.

This would be a good place to end this story, but the temptation is great to tell the rest.

When the shops were opened, the young Englishman was foreman. This was only about twenty-five years ago. In a little while they promoted him.

In 1887 he went to the Wisconsin Central. In 1890 he was made Superintendent of machinery of the Santa Fe route,--one of the longest roads on earth. It begins at Chicago, strong like a man's wrist, with a finger each on Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, and El Paso, and a thumb touching the Gulf at Galveston.

The mileage of the system, at that time, was equal to one-half that of Great Britain; and upon the companies' payrolls were ten thousand more men than were then in the army of the United States. Fifteen hundred men and boys walk into the main shops at Topeka every morning. They work four hours, eat luncheon, listen to a lecture or short sermon in the meeting-place above the shops, work another four hours, and walk out three thousand dollars better off than they would have been if they had not worked.

These shops make a little city of themselves. There is a perfect water system, fire-brigade with fire stations where the firemen sleep, police, and a dog-catcher.

Here they build anything of wood, iron, brass, or steel that the company needs, from a ninety-ton locomotive to a single-barrelled mouse-trap, all under the eye of the Englishman who came to America with a good wife and three babies, a good head and two hands. This man's name is John Player. He is the inventor of the Player truck, the Player hand-car, the Player frog, and many other useful appliances.

This simple story of an unpretentious man came out in broken sections as the special sped along the smooth track, while the General Manager talked with the resident director and the General Superintendent talked with his assistant, who, not long ago, was the conductor of a work-train upon which the G.S. was employed as brakeman. I was two days stealing this story, between the blushes of the mechanical Superintendent.

He related, also, that a man wearing high-cut trousers and milk on his boot had entered his office when he had got to his first position as master-mechanic and held out a hand, smiling, "Vell, you don't know me yet, ain't it? I'm Martin the fireman; I quit ranchin' already, an' I want a jobs."

Martin got a job at once. He got killed, also, in a little while; but that is part of the business on a new road.

Near the shops at Topeka stands the railroad Young Men's Christian Association building. They were enlarging it when I was there. There are no "saloons" in Kansas, so Player and his company help the men to provide other amusements.

[The end]
Cy Warman's short story: Story Of An Englishman

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