Page:William Ernst Trautmann - Industrial Unionism (1908).djvu/19

"Employes are warned to strictly obey instructions and observe the rules. The company will not be responsible for any accident resulting from disobedience of these orders."

This notice or a similar one is served on every employe when given a job, on printed cards adorning the walls of factories, mills, mines or in the railway service. But these orders are merely pretexts. It is entirely in conflict with the labor-saving system of modern production, especially so in the railway service, to expect an "obedience to orders." Railroads, for instance, are reducing the employes to the lowest possible number, and only the absolutely indispensable precautionary measures are employed for the maintenance of the road and the rolling stock.

In any railway system operated for the exaction of the highest possible profit the fighting method of "Passive Action," applied by the workers, must necessarily result in complete demoralization of the complex system; the execution of laws and regulations in their minutest details must paralyze all systems, ordinarily kept in operation only because of the utter neglect of all measures provided for the protection of limb and life of passengers and workers.

The utter absurdity of such regulations in modern railway service cannot be better illus-