A third and more
miscellaneous group are the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, the Order of
Railway Telegraphers, the Switchmen's Union of North America, the
International Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad
Shop Laborers, and the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen. The
organizations comprised in the latter two groups belong to the American
Federation of Labor. For the period from 1898 to the outbreak of the
War, the organizations, popularly known as the "brotherhoods," namely,
those of the engineers, conductors, firemen, and trainmen, are of
outstanding importance.
The brotherhoods were unique among American labor organizations in that
for many years they practically reproduced in most of their features the
sort of unionism typified by the great "Amalgamated" unions of the
fifties and sixties in England.[59] Like these unions the brotherhoods
stressed mutual insurance and benefits and discouraged when they did not
actually prohibit striking. It should, however, be added that the
emphasis on insurance was due not to "philosophy," but to the practical
consideration that, owing to the extra hazardous nature of their
occupations, the men could get no insurance protection from ordinary
commercial insurance companies.
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