RAIL PRESS AGENTS BURY REAL FIGURES AVERAGE PAID EMPLOYES $833 PER YEAR you get $833, which would seem to be the average wage paid to the railroad employe. I do not know if this is so, but these are the figures given out by the railroads and published in the New York Sun. I thought the aver age wages of these so-called aristo crats of labor would be somewhere up in the neighborhood of a thou sand or fifteen hundred dollars, but it seems not. The average is lower than the standard of living set by the best experts for the typical family of three or four human beings. What if the employes get 45 cents out of every dollar of receipts? Could the railroads get the dollar if they did not buy the labor first? And could the la bor be bought cheaper? "Side by side with the carefully cultivated impressions given out by the roads for the purpose of leading public opinion to the conclusion that the roads will go to wratik and per 'flitfon if the eight-hour day and ex tra pay for extra work is' granted, the truth is gradually becoming appar ent to the blindest that the roads are very, very prosperous. Take what the Bureau of Railway Economics, the railroads' own statistical office in Washington, says about it. I quote liberally because this point is highly important Remember that this quo tation is from the railroads' person ally maintained bureau; the figures and the language are the railroads' own language: "Net operating income of the rail ways of the United States for No vember increased $207 per mile, or 84.9 per cent, as compared with No vember, 1914. This comparison, how ever, Is between the highest and the lowest November in six years. A comparison of November, 1915, with the average November of the preced ing five years shows an increase of 45.8 per cent "Total operating revenues amount- "Four hundred thousand railroad men are going to strike unless the few hundred men who control the transportation interests of tha United States, the employers of the 400,000, shall consent to reduce hours of labor and pay extra wages for extra work. Read any daily newspaper and you will find the clev erly prepared publicity put out by the expensive railroad press agents Elisha Lee, Frank Fayant and others. The railroads are talking exactly as all employers have always talked when the question of hours comes up." This is the way Wm. Leavitt Stoddard starts an article on "The Truth About Railroad Wages," -in Pearson's magazine for April Stod dard is the Washington correspon dent of the Boston Transcript and writes like a man who is after facts and wants to cut out the bunk. On the basis of figures supplied by tLv railroad companies, Stoddard shows that the average wage of rail road workers in this country is $833 a year. Every time the railroads hand out statements showing loco motive engineers are paid $200 and $300 a month, this average of $833 a year is pulled down among all the other classes of workers. Newspapers fed by railroad press bureaus point to the fact that the total railroad payroll of the United States "now approaches $1,500,000, 000 a year for the great army of nearly 1,800,00 men who man the roads. Out of every dollar received by the railroads for carrying freight and passengers, the employes get 45 cents." Stoddard comments: "These are enormous sums. But transportation Is an enormous busi ness, and if you divide the total num ber of dollars paid out in wages by, the total number of men who get these dollars; in other words, if you divide $1,500,000,000 by 1,800,000 ed to 298,274,614, an, increase ove? - MaM,