CHAPTER 7

The Workforce: 1880–1900

While many of the jobs involved in laying railroad track could be filled by individuals with minimal training, most of those dealing with the repair and maintenance of the rolling stock—the locomotives and cars of various types—required specialized skills and experience. By 1880, steam-powered trains had already been operating in the eastern United States for some fifty years but for only about a decade anywhere in the West. Therefore, initially most of the skilled positions at the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops were filled by experienced railroaders from the East and Midwest and by European immigrants.

Accompanying the leading edge of the laying of track were not only road construction gangs, but also machinists, boilermakers, and other skilled journeymen. Without a knowledgeable crew with such technical know-how, trains simply could not be kept running. As we have already pointed out, locomotives of that period were complex, temperamental machines, subject to frequent malfunction and requiring daily inspection and periodic major repairs. So, it comes as no surprise that two days after the AT&SF’s last rail was laid into Albuquerque, a crew boarding car and camp moved into town, bringing a contingent of mechanical specialists.¹

Until a roundhouse could be built in Albuquerque, complex repairs on locomotives would have to be taken care of by a resident crew at the recently completed roundhouse in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Erecting buildings that would comprise a locomotive repair facility was not by itself sufficient to launch the work of overhauling locomotives at Albuquerque. A permanent skilled workforce had to be hired and settled as residents. That turned out to be a more difficult task than AT&SF management imagined it would be, and securing and maintaining a staff would for years prove to be a challenge for the Railway. There was a paucity of native New Mexican machinists, boilermakers, and metal workers. At the same time, many Easterners with such skills considered the physical and social environments of New Mexico to be unappealing. As a result, they either chose not to accept employment at Albuquerque or did not stay long once they took jobs. Labor historian James Ducker comments, “In 1900 the Railway Gazette still considered the Southwest to be the hardest place in the nation to get quality workers. Recruitment of skilled and semiskilled employees in this region presented a problem the Santa Fe was never able to solve fully. Even at the end of the [nineteenth] century it found many of its workers in New Mexico and Arizona abandoning the line every summer to head for cooler climes.”²

Albuquerque and New Mexico natives were unlikely to get technical jobs at the locomotive repair shops until some were able to complete the four-year apprenticeship required by AT&SF for an individual to achieve journeyman status. Even then, ethnic prejudice, which was endemic throughout the railroad industry, was a barrier to hiring and advancement of Hispanos, Native Americans, Asians, and African Americans. Workers in any of those groups found it difficult to be admitted to the ranks of apprentices.

Getting hired by AT&SF was complicated by the fact that the company preferred hiring family members of people who were already on the Santa Fe’s payroll. As many researchers have remarked, knowing or being related to someone who already had a good employment record with the company always gave the prospective employee an advantage over those who did not. In part, this hiring practice of the AT&SF was a measure that led to a very loyal workforce. This kind of “favoritism encouraged [the employee] to remain loyal in the hope that he might be able to pass along his good fortune to his friends and relatives,” and many did.³

Even a casual examination of the Albuquerque Shop payrolls or the City Directory shows unmistakably that many sets of close relatives were employed as shopmen at the same time. For example, the 1896 City Directory lists two men with the surname Bambrook working at the Shops, one as a machinist apprentice and the other as a pattern maker. Likewise, two men named Booth, living at the same address on South Edith Street were both employed as clerks at the Shops. And four men with the surname Britton were working at the Locomotive Repair Shops, three of them in the boiler shop. Consequently, newcomers to New Mexico being the earliest hires at the Albuquerque Shops meant that it would be years before locals could break into the ranks of shopmen in significant numbers, even ignoring other preferential factors. Even the rare Hispanics who worked at the Shops during the early years exhibited the same pattern of family hiring. Seven men with the surname Apodaca, for instance, all apparently living on Barelas Road, were simultaneously working at the Shops in 1896.⁴

Figure 7.1. Locomotive #1361 on the turntable at the roundhouse in Las Vegas, NM, 1917. This was the first locomotive to enter the new roundhouse. Malaney Studio photograph. Courtesy of Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico; Gross, Kelly and Company Pictorial Collection 000-096-A10-0032.

Prejudice was nonetheless pervasive for Hispanics. “In 1880, native-born Hispanics comprised the largest group [of wage earners in Albuquerque], 234 persons, or 60 percent of all employed male heads of households. Over 80 percent of the Hispanics, however, were employed as unskilled laborers. Conversely, more than 40 percent of the nativeborn whites held skilled jobs, and almost one-third were employed in the proprietary/managerial field. In the third-largest group, foreign born, most male heads of households (over 40 percent) held skilled jobs, while proprietors, managers, and professionals provided over 34 percent of immigrant male heads of households [in Albuquerque].” Five years later “in all but the native-born Hispanic group, the majority of men were employed as skilled laborers.”⁵ The disparity between ethnic groups was starker within the locomotive repair shops, and it remained a stubborn fact even as an increasing number of Hispanics obtained jobs in skilled positions by 1900. It also appears that during the first twenty years of the Locomotive Repair Shop’s existence “for Albuquerque’s foreign-born population, there was a remarkable degree of economic success, both in occupational mobility and geographic persistence.”⁶

The hurdle of ethnic bias, though, remained in place even when the company found it difficult to retain Eastern United States and European apprentices for their full four-year commitment. Machinist jobs with other, especially smaller, railroads were plentiful, as well as with other sorts of companies, such as the Albuquerque Foundry and Machine Works, located on the east side of the tracks opposite the Locomotive Repair Shops. Also, during the twentieth century, as the automobile increasingly became a factor in American life, the number of machinist jobs at car repair shops exploded. All of these job opportunities lured apprentices away from work for AT&SF.

By the 1890s, AT&SF adopted negative incentives in an attempt to hold on to apprentices for their full training tenure. “In 1892 the company began deducting 5 percent of the wages of the first year apprentices and 10 percent, 15 percent, and 20 percent of those in their second, third, and fourth years, respectively. At the end of the fourth year [of apprenticeship] all of this was paid back to the apprentices.”⁷ Of course, if the apprentice left before the end of the fourth year, the deducted wages would be forfeited.

Figure 7.2. Jacoby’s Albuquerque Foundry, located on the east side of the AT&SF tracks opposite the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops, 1880s. Courtesy of Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico; Cobb Memorial Photography Collection 000-119-0605.

The relative overall scarcity of journeymen machinists, and the complete absence of Spanish-surnamed journeymen machinists, at the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops during their first decades is confirmed by data extracted from the 1896 Albuquerque City Directory and Business Guide. The Directory lists thirty-eight machinists employed by the Locomotive Repair Shops, none of whom had Spanish surnames. Twelve machinist apprentices are listed, again none with Spanish surnames. The two machinist helpers, the next lower grade, once again included no one with an Spanish surname. Meanwhile, exactly half of the group of sixty-two laborers, the lowest level of employees who could repair and rebuild steam locomotives, had Spanish surnames.⁸

Likewise, the Directory for 1896 listed no Spanish-surnamed journeyman boilermakers at the Locomotive Repair Shops, no Spanish-surnamed boilermaker apprentices, and only 5 of the 19 boilermaker helpers were Spanish-surnamed. Of the 3 largest journeyman specialties at the Shops, only the blacksmiths included Spanish-surnamed individuals (2 of the 12), but no Spanish-surnamed apprentices, and only 4 of the 17 blacksmith helpers had Spanish surnames. Thus, among the 177 men known to have been working in the specialties of machinist, boilermaker, and blacksmith, only 42 had Spanish-surnames, and of those, about three-fourths served at the lowest skill and pay level, laborers.

That would change over the years, but for more than a generation Hispanos were woefully underrepresented within the workforce at the Locomotive Repair Shops, which was the only large employer—that is, with more than 500 employees—in the Territory. Overall, in 1900 New Mexico’s population was about 60 percent Hispanic. Those Hispanics who did hold jobs at the Shops were systematically marginalized within the skill hierarchy.⁹

The company discriminated even more severely against African Americans. Generally speaking, “Blacks held unskilled jobs such as warehouseman, flagman, messenger, and janitor, as well as menial temporary jobs such as coal shoveler during the rush season.”¹⁰ Before the widespread use of mechanized earth-moving equipment, mules were the most common source of tractive power for grading and site preparation, including within rail yards and the grounds of shop facilities. AT&SF, like other railroads, employed many African Americans as mule drivers because they were seen stereotypically as particularly suited to that work.

One of the Spanish-surnamed laborers at the Shops in 1896 was Ignacio Baca, grandfather of former chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court Joseph F. Baca and of Mike Baca, a college-educated farmer and vintner from Los Chávez. Ignacio was also progenitor of many other descendants scattered across New Mexico and the United States. Originally from Belen, Ignacio moved in 1880 to 1303 Barelas Road SW, in what would soon become New Albuquerque, specifically to try to get work at the Locomotive Repair Shops. In his middle to late twenties at the time, he was hired on and worked at the shops his whole career, eventually becoming a machinist, retiring with a pension, and helping four of his sons get jobs at the shops. All of them also worked as machinists.¹¹

Another early employee at the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops was David Keleher, who was a couple of years older than Ignacio Baca. But Keleher came to Albuquerque in 1881 already a journeyman tinsmith, having completed an apprenticeship in Lawrence, Kansas, where he had been raised by Irish immigrant parents. In Albuquerque Keleher met and married Irish immigrant Mary Ann Gorry. She was working at the time as governess of the children of the Frank W. Smiths. Mr. Smith was general superintendent of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Shortly after their marriage, the newlyweds returned to Lawrence, Kansas, but in 1888 they came back to Albuquerque, and David again signed on with the AT&SF as a tinsmith. The Kelehers lived first at 303 W. Baca (now Santa Fe) Avenue, rented from Santiago Baca, and then from 1893 to 1911 in a house built at the corner of 4th Street and Atlantic Avenue, on a lot purchased from Franz Huning.

The Kelehers’ son William wrote many years later,

The dominant activity of our immediate pioneer neighborhood, and of the little town of Albuquerque, revolved around the Santa Fe Railroad Shops, located at Second Street and Atlantic Avenue, where our father worked until he died in 1903. . . . The neighborhood grew slowly. Many of the settlers were German emigrants who built substantial brick houses and planted gardens. By diverting water in the acequia madre running north and south through the area into ditches which they dug adjacent to their homes, they were able to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens. . . . the new town of Albuquerque, depend[ed] upon the railroad shops almost entirely for support and maintenance.¹²

Even well into the twentieth century, almost all of the employees at the Locomotive Repair Shops lived nearby, within walking distance of work, except those who could take advantage of public transportation—trolley or bus—or rode bicycles. That practical choice was reinforced by the AT&SF’s policy that mandated that trainmen and enginemen live no farther than three-quarters of a mile from work and strongly recommended that shop employees do likewise.¹³ During the 1880s, AT&SF built housing right on the grounds of the Shops and very nearby, which the company rented to employees. Even into the 1890s, some company-owned housing remained at Wallace, Raton, and Albuquerque.¹⁴

Figure 7.3. Photo of the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops, view from the southeast, ca. 1900. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Albuquerque Museum, Photo Archives, Catalog No. PA1978.050.746.

For journeymen machinists, boilermakers, and blacksmiths fortunate enough to obtain employment at the Locomotive Repair Shops during the 1880s and early 1890s, life must have seemed stable, comfortable, and filled with what was considered to be momentously significant work for the country and the world, let alone for oneself and one’s family and community of acquaintance. For many, the combination of Albuquerque and work for AT&SF was ideal. People like David Keleher and Ignacio Baca were content to spend their whole working lives at the shops. And they were far from rare among employees at the Shops.

The first dozen years of the existence of the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops coincided with a spectacular period in the business of American railroads, and western railroads in particular. Since the end of the Civil War, with little interruption, there had been a frenzy of constructing railroad lines in the western United States. Scores of railroad companies incorporated, built short runs of track, and sold out for a profit to neighboring lines. Making money by investing in a railroad seemed like a sure-fire way to become wealthy. Wage earners in the Locomotive Repair Shops were, likewise, at the top of the pay scale for manufacturing jobs in New Mexico. Furthermore, as historian James Ducker notes, “As long as a man was white and not a Chicano, he could engage in any type of railroad work and aspire to advance.”¹⁵

By the time the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops were established, the AT&SF had already come to accommodations with the relatively few unions—or brotherhoods as they were known—that were active among railroad workers, though these were limited to the operating crafts—the engineers, firemen, brakeman, and conductors. The repair-shop employees were not directly affected. The shopmen did, nevertheless, benefit from efforts by the AT&SF to provide some benefits to its workforce, put in place to retain trained and effective employees. As Ducker observes, “It was not a great trial for the railroad to recruit men to fill its positions. However, to hire men who would remain faithful and efficient was a challenge the Santa Fe’s labor policies worked to meet.”¹⁶

Among such steps taken by the railroad was the establishment in March 1884 of the Atchison Railroad Employees’ Association, the goal of which was to “build hospitals and contract with doctors throughout the line to care for sick and injured employees.”¹⁷ This mirrored the 1882 building of a railway workers’ hospital at two-year-old New Albuquerque by the AT&SF subsidiary the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. Although originally provided as a free service, beginning in 1884, the company deducted from workers’ wages to support the hospital system. By 1894, the monthly payroll deduction throughout the AT&SF system for support of hospital care ranged from thirty cents to one dollar, depending on pay rate.¹⁸ The A&P also paid for burial space at Albuquerque for employees who died on the job and had no known family.¹⁹

In addition, during the 1880s the Santa Fe set up “reading rooms” in Albuquerque and elsewhere across the Southwest. Each reading room made available copies of magazines and books, as well as space for playing cards and billiards. The amenities also generally included toilet and bathing facilities because many of the male AT&SF employees were single, ate at restaurants, and slept in a variety of temporary accommodations. Thus, keeping clean was often difficult and therefore neglected.

Looking back from 1902, AT&SF president Edward Ripley wrote about the reading rooms that “the Santa Fe management had in view several things: (a) To aid the employes [sic] and their families in selfdevelopment. (b) To surround them with influences by which their lives would be brighter and more hopeful. (c) To give them an opportunity of making themselves worthy of promotion to higher spheres. (d) To put a new value on a man’s life, and emphasize brain and conscience power as a factor in railroad operation.”²⁰ Responding to the trend of the times, Santa Fe employees of the late nineteenth century “showed an abiding drive to improve themselves.”²¹ Many, especially shopmen, were prolific inventors and refiners of tools, equipment, and methods.

Certainly, relations between shopmen and their supervisors were not always congenial. Shopmen at Albuquerque, as at other locomotive repair shops, frequently complained about arbitrary and overly stringent penalties imposed by supervisors for honest mistakes or because of animus toward a particular employee. After years of complaints to management about abuse of shopmen by their immediate supervisors,

On August 1, 1897, the Santa Fe adopted a discipline program . . . [based on] a scheme of merits and demerits called the Brown system, after its originator, George R. Brown, general superintendent of the Fall Brook Railroad in New York. . . . Under the system the company could still hand out summary discharges for major offenses, but all others could be punished only by reprimands or demerits, a record of which was kept for each employee in the offices of the division superintendent. An employee was notified of each mark entered against his name and had the right to appeal those he considered unjustified. Should too many demerits, or “brownies” as they were commonly called, appear beside the worker’s name the superintendent could call on him to explain the mistakes, and, if unsatisfied, dismiss him.²²

The contracts that the company offered to shopmen in the 1880s were considered to be as generous as any in the industry. In the middle of the next decade, skilled shopmen earned $2.50 to $3.00 a day working for AT&SF, with shop foremen making more than $3.00.²³ Nevertheless, as we will see in chapter 10, AT&SF shopmen walked off the job in the early 1890s and forced the company to sign contracts with the shop craft brotherhoods that included pay increases. That seemed only fair with railroad earnings leading the national economy to dizzying heights.

As in economic bubbles familiar from more recent times, the price of railroad stocks climbed and climbed with no end in sight. Until that end came, rapidly, late in 1892 and the first months of 1893. At that time, the collapse and bankruptcy of multiple railroads led the way into what has been called the “depression of the nineties,” which also strongly affected manufacturing, agriculture, and construction. The resultant unemployment was at least on a par with that experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Overly optimistic and exuberant expansion of AT&SF’s network of track was both symptomatic of and contributory to industrywide economic profligacy. In 1890, the company spent extravagant sums of money to buy two railroads of highly questionable worth: the Colorado Midland and the St. Louis and San Francisco.²⁴ Weighed down with debts from these purchases and other similar unwise expenditures, the Santa Fe was auctioned off to a receiver. That cast a pall of uncertainty over the workforce at the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops and throughout the Santa Fe system as a whole.

At almost the same time, two other important railroads also failed, the Northern Pacific Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad, plunging the entire industry nationally into a five-year-long depression. The AT&SF went into receivership in December 1893 and did not extricate itself for two years.²⁵ Even then, growth of all railroads remained sluggish for years. One economic historian who specialized in this period sums up the sluggishness this way: “The depression which started in 1893 was not fully overcome until after 1900.” Again writing about the national situation of railroads, he wrote, “From 1892 to 1895 gross new railroad mileage dropped from 4,584 miles to 1,938 miles, a decline of about 58 per cent. Not until the turn of the century did new railroad mileage again attain the 1892 levels.” Likewise, purchase of steam locomotives by all US railroads combined fell from a peak of 205 per quarter in 1892 to a low of less than 20 per quarter.²⁶

Nationwide, unemployment peaked at about 20 percent during the 1890s. With flattening of the trend in growth of freight and passenger miles recorded by the AT&SF during this period, the workforce at the Albuquerque Shops grew at a much slower pace than it had during the previous decade. But we do not find evidence of layoffs or furloughs of any significant duration at the Albuquerque Shops during the depression of the nineties. Nevertheless, the mood among railroad workers was one of anticipating the hitherto unthinkable demise of American railroading.