Boardinghouse Guests: The Railroaders
As was true of lodging vacancies at Julia Wolfe’s Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse, in the railroad industry employment opportunities were not equally shared. Ironically, in the 19th century South, while African American laborers largely built the railroads, by 1900 almost all workers in train service occupations and in the railyards were white men. A few women worked in unskilled laundry and cleaning jobs and a few in clerical occupations. The work of unskilled service occupations such as cook, waiter, and porter were assigned to African Americans. Very few people of color held the skilled jobs located in the maintenance shops, and onboard train services such as brakeman and fireman. While their experience would differ depending on what part of the country they lived in, as railroad travelers, African Americans were often segregated into “Jim Crow” cars. Thomas Wolfe reveals the strong racial prejudices he observed in his own family in his novella The Lost Boy as it relates to train travel. In the story his mother is proud when his brother Grover tells the family’s black employee that although they have crossed into Indiana, he could not ride in the same train car as the white passengers.
The Wolfe family frequently travelled by train. For Thomas Wolfe, trains were a part of everyday life. He always remembered home was where “he had heard…the far retreating wail of a whistle in a distant valley, and faint thunder on the rails.” He showed his love of railroad workers in Look Homeward, Angel when he immortalized the engineer Tom Cline who “leaned far out the cab and looked: the starlight glimmered faintly on the rails” while climbing the “Saluda Grade,” the steepest standard-gauge mainline railway grade in the United States. Examining Julia Wolfe’s guest register we find many of the guests at the boardinghouse shared this common employer. The railroad was one of the most important industries in the United States. At its peak, in the 1920s, there were an estimated 1.7 million people working nationwide, in some capacity, for the railroads. Over the course of the previous 80 years a vast network of rails and stations had spread across America. Coast to coast the railroad carried manufactured goods, food, mail, express packages, and people, longer distances than ever before. In cities and towns across our country, the railway station had become the welcoming center and gateway to the community. Architecturally it was often one of the most ornate buildings in the area. Julia Wolfe sent her children to the Southern Railway station, located just west of downtown Asheville, to hand out her cards and “drum up some trade” among travelers in need of lodging. The Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse was easily accessible by a short electric streetcar ride to the town square and at one dollar per day, affordable. African American travelers would have to find lodging at boardinghouses in other parts of town.
Railroad employees and their families were among the more frequent rail travelers. They were people whose wages allowed them the luxury of travel. The most visible and glamorous jobs were the locomotive engineers and the conductors. The following list shows a sample of railroad workers from around the country who were guests at the Old Kentucky Home between 1910 and 1925. None of these railroaders would be classified as unskilled workers. Their skilled occupations reflect the status of the guests in the boardinghouse. By 1921 the average wage of the railroad engineer was about $6.00 per day, a station clerk might earn about $4.25 per day, a yard service worker might earn $3.00 per day. The conductor, considered the “captain” of a train crew, was responsible for the safety of all passengers. Over 1/3rd of the men listed were engineers, specialists over a “division” that encompassed about 150 miles of a line. They were the men who drove the trains, often admired by the public, like the character Tom Cline. Most railroaders however worked in the stations and in the rail yards. Many station workers were clerks, estimated to be 20 percent of the railroad workforce nationwide.
Francis Beaty Fishburne (1873–1925) Columbia, SC., Conductor, Southern Railway.
Edward Lawrence Wells, Jr. (1886–1918) Charleston, SC., Engineer.
Alexander John Powers (1883–1976) St. Augustine, FL., Inspector.
John Baker Banks (1865–1947) Elmira, NY., Dispatcher.
Walter Henry Strickland (1867–1927) Macon, GA., Engineer.
Charles William Adams (1876–1965) Erwin, TN., Timekeeper Railroad Office, CG&O Railroad.
Joseph Pratt Church (1855–1930) Decatur, IL., Telegraph Operator, Wabash Railroad.
George William Cocke (1852–1927) Bristol, VA., Engineer Locomotive.
Ezra Joe Romig (1859–1949) Meridian, MS., Engineer Locomotive.
Robert Lee Pierce (1862–1960) Salisbury, NC., Engineer, Southern Railway.
Charles Turner Skinner (1900–1983) Hertford, NC., Freight Clerk Railroad Depot.
Albert Strickland (1888–1929) St. Augustine, FL., Shipping Clerk, Atlantic Coastline Railroad.
Joseph William Baily (1870–1942) Henderson, NC., Agent Railroad Office.
William Robb Lutes (1900–1962) Wilmington, NC., Clerk, Atlantic Coastline Railroad.
For more information, check out: https://americanhistory.si.edu/america-on-the-move/lives-railroad
