Note 6 — Footnotes

In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26, 1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent in the last twenty years; and he said that, “while the British operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His increasing years of service are taken into account in various beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not ‘turned down’ in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to his years of service” (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6). Return to text