One of the broadest acts of presidential power happened in December 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson issued an order for the federal government to nationalize the entire railroad system during World War I.
For several years, Congress and the Wilson administration had tried to intervene in the railroad industry’s economic struggles. By 1916, there were critical problems with the railroad system. The empowerment of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) a decade earlier to control shipping rates came about with passage of the Hepburn Rate Act of 1906.
President Theodore Roosevelt championed the Hepburn Act, which gave the ICC power to regulate “fair, just and reasonable” passenger and shipping rates charged by the railroads. Roosevelt succeeded despite heavy opposition from railroad interests, but the rate caps later came back to make some railroad systems unprofitable through the next decade, forcing them into receivership.
The railroad industry also saw the threat of a strike in 1916 as workers sought better conditions. Congress sought to head off the strike with the passage of the Adamson Act, which gave some unionized railway workers a standard eight-hour work day.
 |
| Erie, PA, Rail Yard During the War |
However, railroad owners balked at honoring the eight-hour work day. The issue made it to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Edward White wrote in Wilson v. New that a lower court erred in ruling the act unconstitutional, because Congress had “a power which inevitably resulted from its authority to protect interstate commerce.”
At the same time, Congress passed the Army Appropriations Act of 1916, which granted the president the power to take over the nation’s transportation systems, if needed during wartime conditions.
The railroad system faltered under the heavy demands of a wartime economy in 1917, resulting in materials being unable to be loaded and shipped on trains. On 26 December 1917, President Wilson issued a declaration that he had nationalized the railroad system, and he ordered Secretary of War Newton Baker to take possession of the railroads on 28 December 1917. Wilson appointed his son-in-law, Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, as administrator for the United States Railroad Administration.
During 1918, Congress passed an act that guaranteed that the railroad system would return to private control within 21 months of a peace treaty signed by the United States.
The railroads were divided into three divisions—East, West and South. Uniform passenger ticketing was begun, while more than 250 duplicative passenger trains on different railroads were eliminated from eastern railroads. To further discourage civilian travel, sleeping car services were reduced and extra fares were applied to them to discourage their use. Among other actions, the USRA raised rates for passenger and freight traffic in 1918. It also increased wages for railway employees. In The American Freight Train, author Jim Boyd wrote that the railroads were not technically nationalized. Under the broad powers of the United States Railroad Administration (USRA), each railroad was rented and provided fair compensation for its cooperation.
But in his book, The Routledge Historical Atlas Of The American Railroads, John Stover noted that the railroads were paid via “the average of the net operating income for the three years between June 30, 1914, and June 10, 1917.” Unfortunately for the railroads, those particular years had been especially difficult for the industry.
 |
| The Mikado Was the USRA's Highly Successful Light Freight Engine |
The inventory of railroad rolling stock under USRA control was 61,000 locomotives, 2.25 million freight cars and 58,000 passenger cars. In a positive long-term move for the railroads, the federal government spent $380 million on over 100,000 new railroad cars and 1,930 steam-powered locomotives. USRA-mandated standard designs were used for the new locomotives and railcars.
The railways remained under federal control not only for the remainder of World War I but until 1920. The federal government made considerable efforts to consolidate and streamline services under its legal monopoly. More than 100,000 railroad cars were built using standardized designs and an estimated $1 billion was invested in transportation systems.
Congress then needed to change the conditions that reverted control of the railroads back to the private sector, since the Senate didn’t ratify a peace treaty after World War I. The Transportation Act of 1920 (also known as the Esch-Cummins Act) returned the railroad system to its private owners, but it expanded the powers of the ICC and established collective bargaining systems.
Sources: The Constitution Center and FreightWaves.com Websites
The "Hours of Service Act of 1907," allowed railroads to work their employees over 100 hours a week…432 hours a month (long before we did studies on sleep deprivation and its dangerous impact upon work safety, efficiency and effectiveness, and burnout of employees!).
ReplyDeleteIn 1917, rail unions fought for a sane 8 hour day, but due to the war that effort was crushed by Congress and the administration, setting up a long 100 year abuse of railroad operating crew employees running train crews unsafely on America's rails.
Suddenly the old folk song of "working on the railroad all the live-long day, just to pass the time of day" made sense to me as an adult: The song was a lament of railroad workers to their working conditions (especially train and engine service personnel) who had no life other than that of constantly working on the railroad all the live-long day (except for sleep time of 5-6 hours between train runs), with hardly any personal life at all!
Prior to The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the requirement in the Hours of Service Act of 1907 for train crews was 432 hours of work a month (over 100 hour work weeks). After the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 the hours of service shrank to a mere 278 hours of work per month or roughly a 70 hour work week train crews operate under today.
The railroads were one of America's last sweatshops that remained that way as a result of decisions of Congress in 1917 to keep keep laws requiring such terrible work hours for train crews (up to over 100 hours a week), to keep trains running in WW I. After the war, little was done to change these terrible working conditions for 100 years.
For anyone interested in railroad history in World War I, Rudolf Daniels, Ph.D. wrote an excellent book on the subject, filled with photos and illustrations, entitled " The Great Railroad War; United States Railway Operations During World War I" (The Garbely Publishing Company, Branchville, NJ, 2017). The book is a treasure trove of information on railroads "over here" in the US and "over there" in France during The Great War.
David, that's fascinating. Thank you for adding so much to this already rich post.
DeleteAlso, the railroad seizure was mentioned in the article from “Roads” on July 10, 2019, when all of the locomotives destined for the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad (DT&I) were seized by the government. They had been destined for Czarist Russia. The wheels had to be reconfigured to match the US rails.
ReplyDeleteThis is an important story, given how powerful railroads had become during the previous decades.
ReplyDeleteMr. Thompson seems to imply that all railway workers worked 100 hours per week every week. Not true. The easiest Way to have discourage this would have been over time rules requiring a greater hourly rate for hours over, say, 40. 40. Instead, the government bungled into the railroad business.
ReplyDeleteAll railway workers did not work those excessive hours, only train crews (trainmen & engineers), especially over the road freight train crews, that due to the Railroad Hours of Service Act of 1907 allowed railroads to work freight train trainmen and engineers 16 continuous hours in a day to a maximum of 432 hours a month.
ReplyDeleteIn 1917 railroad operating train crew unions had a good chance to get legislation passed for more sane working conditions for train operating crews, but due to WW I, Congress and the administration did not approve those changes of hours of service. Some 60 years later the hours were changed to 14 hour days and finally 12 hour days some 100 years later in 2008.
For further exploration, here is a history of the Railroad Hours of Service Act of 1907, in an article entitled: "A Look Back at 100 Years of Hours of Service Laws" (see: https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/hours-of-service-where-weve-been-where-we-need-to-be/ ).