Indiana Historical Society

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Chicago Daily Tribune, 21, 22 July 1914; Testimony of Albert R. Warring, pp. 4–5, and unpaginated photographic exhibits 1, 2, in Bill of Exceptions, filed 21 June 1915, in Law Case 34, J. A. Fellers, Administrator of the Estate of Albert E. Fellers, Deceased, v. Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway Company, heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division, Record Group 21, National Archives and Records Administration–Great Lakes Region, Chicago (hereafter cited as Fellers v. CLS & SB, except in instances where the source document is the transcript of testimony from the Bill of Exceptions, in which case the initial citation will be abbreviated as above and subsequent citations will be abbreviated with the name of the witness and testimony page numbers alone.)

The work train apparently consisted of box motor car 500, built in 1908 by the Niles Car Company; reel car 308, a thirty-six-foot flatcar with an insulated wood deck; unpowered line car 305 in the middle, a thirty-eight-foot tool car with a wood platform above the roof; and two gondolas (probably from the 310 though 316 series of cars built in 1907 by the American Car Company), measuring thirty-six feet long, ten feet, three inches wide, and eight feet, one inch from the railhead to the top of the permanent side boards. See the roster of Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway equipment published in Joseph Canfield, ed., Electric Railways of Indiana, vol. 3, bulletin 104 (Chicago, Ill.: Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 1960): I-20.
Michigan City Evening Dispatch, 22 July, 1914; Warring testimony, 4–5,and photographic exhibits 1, 2 in Bill of Exceptions, Fellers v. CLS &SB; “The Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway Company, Time-Table Number 21 for the Government of Employe[e]s Only, Effective 4:01 A.M., May 25, 1913,” in the author’s possession. The author wishes to thank David L. Gangwer of Cypress, Texas, the son of longtime South Shore Line worker David Gangwer, for providing this rare 1913 South Shore Line employee timetable. The author has followed the convention of railroads in the area by capitalizing “State Line” when it refers to a proper place name on the railroad.
Enumeration of Albert E. Fellers, line 75, sheet 8, enumeration district 6, City of Cedar Falls Black Hawk County, Iowa, Population Schedules (National Archives microfilm publication M623, roll 417), Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900; Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration–Great Lakes Region, Chicago (hereafter cited as NARA–GLR).
J. A. Fellers Deposition, 23 Jan. 1915, p. 8, and Testimony of J. A. Fellers, 21 Apr. 1915, pp. 19–20, in Bill of Exceptions, Fellers v. CLS & SB; Charles Ludden, “Hot Wires or Travel, All in Lineman’s Life,” The Pantagraph 2, no. 3 (Mar. 1928): 3.
Fellers deposition, 8; “Reducing Maintenance Costs on a Single-Phase Railway,” Electric Railway Journal 46 (4 Dec. 1915): 1112; Annual Report of the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway to the Public Service Commission of Indiana for the Fiscal Year Ending 30 June 1914, p. 61, Annual Reports of Electric Railways, Records of the Public Service Commission, Indiana State Archives, Indianapolis, Ind. Complete operation of the new automatic block signal system began 9 March 1914, with commencement of the overhead wire project shortly thereafter.
“Reducing Maintenance Costs on a Single-Phase Railway,” 1112.
Testimony of Charles W. Hunter, p. 18, Fellers v. CLS & SB.
Warring testimony, 2.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 22 July 1914. The best description of wintertime overhead line repair work on the South Shore Line—quite possibly the only description—can be found in Robert L. Winkler, “Saga of the ‘Shadow’ Lineman,” First & Fastest 15, no. 3 (autumn 1999): 11–17. Winkler’s first-person account includes a thorough explanation of the South Shore Line’s overhead catenary system that a layperson can understand and anecdotes about the line crew’s work experiences, as well as detailed drawings of overhead catenary hardware and designs from different historical periods on the South Shore Line dating back to 1908.
"Hegewisch to Hammond, 1911,” canfield, ed., Electric Railways of Indiana, I-60 (detail map 4).
Warring testimony, 2–3; “The Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway,” Electric Railway Journal 33 (10 Apr. 1909): 676; “Reducing Maintenance Costs on a Single-Phase Railway,” 1108–9.
Burns’ Revised Statutes of 1908, section 5786, as reported in A.R. No. 962, “Elevation of Telephone Wires,” and A.R. No. 968, “Elevation of Trolley Wires,” in Fifth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 1910 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1911), 184, 185.
Warring testimony, 2–3, 5, 7–10.
C. Edward Hedstrom, with John D. Horachek, “Six Decades Service on the South Shore Line: Oral History with C. Edward Hedstrom,” Indiana Heritage Research Project Grant No. 90-3005, 1990–1991, pp. 48–49.
Warring testimony, 3; Testimony of C. F. Buckley, 11, Fellers v. CLS & SB. In 1914 the South Shore Line crossed other railroads at only three places in thirty-two miles between the Michigan City shops and Cudahy, a flag stop six miles west of Gary, but the next five miles through East Chicago and Hammond featured eight separate crossings before the state line. See Buckley testimony, 15, and Canfield, ed., Electric Railways of Indiana, I-60–I-63 (detail maps 1, 4, 5–7, 9–13).
Warring testimony, 4–5; Hunter testimony, 16–17; “CLS & SB Ry. Co. Employee Timetable no. 21, May 25, 1913,” p. 1; Michigan City Evening Dispatch, 22 July 1914.
Warring testimony, 4–6.
Ibid., 5–6.
Ibid., 4–6; Testimony of Charles Harper, pp. 21-22, Fellers v. CLS & SB.
Warring testimony, 6.
Harper testimony, 21–22; Buckley testimony, 12; Hunter testimony, 17; Warring testimony, 6.
Hammond Times, 21 July 1914; Michigan City Evening Dispatch, 22 July 1914.
Michigan City Evening Dispatch, 22 July 1914; Cedar Falls(Iowa) Record, 23 July 1914.
On the increase of labor tasks per worker, see the Full Train Crew Act of February 13, 1907 in Second Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 1907 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1907), 240–41. The necessity of enacting legislation to limit railroad operating crews to work days under sixteen hours is manifest in the federal Hours of Service Law, which passed on 4 March 1907 and went into effect one year later, and Indiana’s Sixteen-Hour Act of 8 March 1907. On the federal law, see Mark Aldrich, Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 171, 173; Second Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 244–45. The Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway trainman’s complaint that the management required more than sixteen hours of work appears in Fifth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 155. Interurban trainmen were not protected by the sixteen-hour state law, but the railroad commission nonetheless publicly recommended that the electric railroad companies comply with the intended outcome of the federal and state “human endurance” laws. See Circular No. 55, “Hours of Service—Human Endurance Limits,” Third Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 1908 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1909), 477. The culture of risk and equation of fearlessness with competency is examined in John Williams-Searle, “Courting Risk: Disability, Masculinity, and Liability on Iowa’s Railroads, 1868–1900,” The Annals of Iowa 58 (winter 1999): 40–46. The quotation from the rule book can be found in Third Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 297. “What a pity” appears in Fourth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana,1909 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1910), 484.
Larry Plachno, Sunset Lines: The Story of the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin Railroad, History, vol. 2 (Polo, Ill.: Transportation Trails, 1989), 221; Fourth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 528; Sixth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 1911 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1912), 342; Michigan City News, 1 Apr., 10 June, 26 Aug. 1914.
Aldrich, Safety First, 9, 15, 36–40, 86, 184, 284.
Annual Report of the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway to the Railroad Commission of Indiana for the Fiscal Year Ending 30 June 1912, p. 67, Interurban Railroad Company Annual Reports, 1908–1962, Records of the Public Service Commission of Indiana, Indiana State Archives (hereafter abbreviated CLS & SB Annual Report, FY or CY [for calendar year] [year]). CLS & SB Annual Reports, FY 1914, p. 67; FY 1915, p. 67; CY 1916, Schedules 416, 417, pp. 404, 405; CY 1917, Schedules 416, 417, pp. 404, 405; CY 1918, Schedules 416, 417, pp. 404, 405. The railroad official who wrote the data on the Public Service Commission’s annual report form left blank the boxes for accidents to employees in fiscal years 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1916, while other years featured zeros in certain accident categories, so the author assumed the blank categories to be missing data, rather than an implied reporting of zero. In 1916 the Public Service Commission required both a fiscal year 1916 report and also a calendar year 1916 report, the former covering 1 July 1915 through 30 June 1916. The author chose to omit the FY 1916 report with its missing data, utilizing the CY 1916 report with its data about one worker death and four worker injuries. This choice excludes the six-month period 1 July–31 December 1915, but since no data exists from that time period in the Public Service Commission annual report, the exclusion errs on the side of underreporting the number of worker injuries and deaths.
The federal accident data compiled annually by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) did not include electric interurban railways at that time. The first ICC accident located about the South Shore Line dates from 1926. The records of all accident investigation reports, 1911–1963, are preserved in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, with other records of the Interstate Commerce Commission as RG 134.
Aldrich, Safety First, 284; Fourth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 525–26, 528; Fifth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 292–93, 303–4, 313–14, 327–28, 483; Sixth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 339–40, 351–52, 362–63, 375–76, 475; Seventh Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, 1912 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1913), 608, 618–19, 703; Annual Report of the Public Service Commission of Indiana for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1914 (Indianapolis: William B. Burford, 1914), 64.
Economic historian Mark Aldrich calculated how the odds increased over time in his book Safety First, 324 n13. If the annual mortality rate on a certain railroad is x, then the cumulative probability of death over k years equals 1-(1-x)k. The probability of risk is based upon an annual mortality rate x averaging 0.00398 (or 1 in 251) over k=10 years; 1-(1-0.00398)10 = 0.03909, or 3.9 deaths per 100 workers.
"Safety Pays,” The Pantagraph 2, no. 9 (Sept. 1928): 4; Sam Evans, press secretary, Local Union 723, Fort Wayne, Indiana, letter to the editor, The Journal of Electrical Workers 14 (May 1915): 331; Williams-Searle, “Courting Risk,” 47, 51, 54–57; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 64-75. The Illinois Traction System was large enough to establish a hospital association for workers in 1907. Originally membership was voluntary, but railroad management made dues to the hospital association a compulsory part of employment by 1912. Electric Railway Journal 39 (20 Jan. 1912): 95.
Aldrich, Safety First, 34, 171.
Crystal Eastman, Work Accidents and the Law (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969), 169–71, 175–76; Lawrence M. Friedman and Jack Ladinsky, “Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents,” Columbia Law Review 67 (Jan. 1967): 60–62; Aldrich, Safety First, 30–31; Williams-Searle, “Courting Risk,” 31, 37–40.
Aldrich, Safety First, 31; Williams-Searle, “Courting Risk,” 58–59.
Philip L. Merkel, “The Origins of an Expanded Federal Court Jurisdiction: Railroad Development and the Ascendancy of the Federal Judiciary,” Business History Review 58 (autumn 1984): 345–46.
Friedman and Ladinsky, “Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents,” 67.
Sheldon Stromquist, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 220–23, 228, 272. Some of the numerous other studies of railroad employment include Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983); James H. Ducker, Men of the Steel Rails: Workers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983); David L. Lightner, Labor on the Illinois Central Railroad, 1852–1900: The Evolution of an Industrial Environment (New York: Arno, 1977); Gerald G. Eggert, Railroad Labor Disputes: The Beginnings of Federal Strike Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967); Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); and Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Clifton J. Phillips, Indiana in Transition: The Emergence of an Industrial Commonwealth, 1880–1920, The History of Indiana, vol. 4 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1968), 258–61.
Ibid., 258; William G. Ross, A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890–1937 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 16, 41–42; William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 191.
Interstate Commerce Commission appropriations, 34 Statutes at Large 705, Chapter 3914; “An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Limiting the Hours of Service of Employees Thereon,” 34 Stat. 1415, Chap. 2939; “An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees on Railroads,” 35 Stat. 476, Chap. 225; Interstate Commerce Commission appropriations, 35 Stat. 966, Chap. 299; Aldrich, Safety First, 176, 286.
“An Act Relating to Liability of Common Carriers in the District of Columbia and Territories and Common Carriers Engaged in Commerce between the States and between the States and Foreign Nations to Their Employees,” 34 Stat. 232, Chap. 3073; Howard v. Illinois Central Railroad Company, 207 U.S. Reports 463 U.S. 499 (1908); “An Act Relating to the Liability of Common Carriers by Railroad to Their Employees in Certain Cases,” 35 Stat. 65, Chap. 149.
Eastman, Work Accidents and the Law, 208; Ross, Muted Fury, 43; Mondou v. New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company, 223 U.S. 1 (1912); Kansas City Western Railroad Company v. George B. McAdow, 240 U.S. 51 (1916); Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company v. United States, 241 U.S. 344 (1916); Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company v. Edgar E. Campbell, 241 U.S. 497 (1916); Washington Railway and Electric Company v. Ann Catherine Scala, Administratrix of the Estate of Alvin Joseph Scala, Deceased, 244 U.S. 630 (1917).
Donald F. Tingley, The Structuring of a State: The History of Illinois, 1899–1928, The Sesquicentennial History of Illinois, vol. 5 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press for the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission and the Illinois State Historical Society, 1980), 101; The Chicago and Interurban Traction Co., Plaintiff in Error v. The Industrial Board of Illinois et al. Defendants in Error, 282 Illinois Reports 230; Philips, Indiana in Transition, 336–37.
Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement, 33; Ross, Muted Fury, 3, 5; Rayman L. Solomon, History of the Seventh Circuit, 1891–1941 (n.p.: The Bicentennial Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, [1980?]), 108–9. The broader questions of how workers and judges interacted in the realm of law and how court decisions constricted the American labor movement are explored in Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement; Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Herbert Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 1836–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Peter Karsten, Heart versus Head: Judge-Made Law in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Karen Orren, Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Victoria Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
“Anderson, Albert Barnes,” in Judges of the United States, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office for the Bicentennial Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1983), 9; Solomon, History of the Seventh Circuit, 108–9.
Solomon, History of the Seventh Circuit, 108–9. Some influential studies of the Progressive Era include Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914, 2d ed. (1957; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1983); Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Praecipe for Summons, 3 December 1914, and Complaint, 11 December 1914, pp. 2–5, Fellers v. CLS & SB; Probate Case 5263, In the Matter of the Estate of Albert E. Fellers, Deceased, Records of the District Court of Black Hawk County, Black Hawk County Courthouse, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Answer, 2 January 1915, Fellers deposition, 5–6, and endorsement, Fellers. v. CLS & SB; Enumeration of James Fellers, Jr., line 24, sheet 12A, family number 293, enumeration district 7, Black Hawk County, Iowa, Population Schedules, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (M624, Roll 392), Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, NARA–GLR.
Warring testimony, 8–10.
Ibid., 10; Buckley testimony, 11–13.
Buckley testimony, 14 (italics added).
Hunter testimony, 17–18.
Fellers testimony, 20–21.
Harper testimony, 22.
Ibid.; Hammond Times, 22 Apr. 1914.
“Awarded $75,000 against New Haven for Loss of Arms,” The Electrical Worker 14, no. 1 (May 1914): 237; “Information Wanted,” The Journal of Electrical Workers and Operators 14, no. 9 (Jan.1915): 41.
“Gets Verdict of $22,750,” The Electrical Worker 14, no. 7 (Nov. 1914): 551.
William D. Middleton, South Shore: The Last Interurban (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1970), 23–24, 135; Michigan City News, 10 June 1914; CLS & SB Annual Reports, FYs 1910–1915, p. 49, and CY 1916, pp. 231, 306.
Middleton, South Shore, 134, 159; “The Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway Company, Time-Table Number 21 for the Government of Employes Only”; “Freight Locomotives for the South Shore Lines,” Electric Railway Journal 48 (11 Nov. 1916): 1018–21; Michigan City News, 10 Jan. 1917.
Michigan City Evening Dispatch, 22 Nov. 1916; Michigan City Evening News, 22, 23 Apr. 1916; “Obituary,” Electric Railway Journal 48 (2 Dec. 1916): 1180. The conductor on the locomotive, Earl Ferner, also known as D. E. Ferner, began working for the South Shore Line in 1908, eventually serving as the railroad’s vice president and general manager, as well as a member of the board of directors, before being elected president from 26 September until 31 December 1960. 1960 Annual Report, Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad (Michigan City, Ind.: Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad, 1961), 12 (copy in the author’s possession).