A Railroad Manager in Seattle Pities the Men Who Paid to Hear Debs

Seattle — It cannot be said that Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was the only great railway man in this city yesterday, for by a strange coincidence there appeared on the register of the Rainier-Grand Hotel the name of the man who was more responsible than any other for the defeat of Debs and his thousands of strikers: John M. Egan of St. Paul, Minn., president and general manager of the Chicago Great Western Railway and of the powerful combination of railroad magnates known as the General Managers' Association. Mr. Debs came to town in the morning with a 'hurrah.' Mr. Egan came quietly, and probably not a dozen people were aware of his presence. For some time past he had been in Portland, where with other prominent railroad men he figured in the suits of the O. R. & N., Oregon Short Line and Utah Northern, which occupied the attention of the courts for several days. When he finished his business he started for his Eastern home and concluded to come to Seattle and go to St. Paul over the Great Northern Railroad, which he helped to build and which he rides over for the first time on his present trip east. He left the city last night at 11 o'clock, and for an hour before his departure talked to a Post-Intelligencer reporter.

Mr. Egan, unlike many others, did not go to hear Mr. Debs lecture. He had heard Debs before and knew just about what he would say. In speaking of Debs and the great strike, Egan said: 'It's unnecessary for me to discuss Mr. Debs in the newspapers. He has already been discussed and the people know him pretty well. I pity the poor devils who go and spend 50 cents to hear him. The only advice they will get is to organize and strike again, and the last great tie-up for which Mr. Debs was responsible plainly shows what a success he made of it. The American Railway Union will never flourish again, and the only men who nowadays talk of having another strike are those who figured in the last one, lost their positions and are now anxious that another shall occur in order that they will be able to secure the positions of those who would be foolish enough to go out. There are hundreds of such men in the country today; men, some of whom have been in the railroad business for from ten to twenty years and who were competent in every way. They had worked along and received fairly good wages until Mr. Debs organized his union, told them that they were slaves and that, if they would only strike, the companies would be compelled to raise wages. They took the advice of Mr. Debs, and the result they well know. They will never be able to get back their old positions and they must suffer. Many of them will go hungry, but not so Mr. Debs. I think if you make a little inquiry you will find that Mr. Debs never went to bed hungry. He has drawn a nice big salary and is now traveling about the country at the expense of the working men.

'The A. R. U. may get up a good membership once again, but, as I said before, you will find that many of the new members are those who figured in the last strike and who now want to encourage others to go out in order to create some new berths into which they hope to drop.

'Mr. Debs, I suppose, appeared on the platform tonight dressed as well and probably a great deal better than many of the members of the General Managers' Association, and he lives just as well as any of them. In his lecture he tells his audience that the General Managers' Association is composed of the managers of all of the railroads of any importance in the United States, when in truth it is made up of the managers of the roads which have their terminus in Chicago. But I don't care to discuss the matter except to say that Mr. Debs never won a strike, and I don't believe ever will.'

On the railroad situation, Mr. Egan said: 'There is no question but that the railroad business is very quiet, and I consider that that is a pretty good criterion to go by in sizing up the general condition of the country. It is the belief among railroad men that business will not be resumed until there is another crop, and the Eastern railroads are now doing all in their power to aid the farmers of Kansas and Nebraska as well as those of several other states to bring about this result. The public must remember that all, or rather a large portion, of the railroads are very heavily bonded and it is necessary for them to earn considerable money in order to keep even. Take a road like the Union Pacific, about which there has been so much talk. When that road was constructed years ago, the cost of construction was immense. Rails which you can now buy for $15 a ton cost at that time in the neighborhood of $75, and the quality of the rail was not near so good. Other material was equally high and it cost much money to get good men. As a result, it was found necessary for the company to bond the road very high; in many instances the road was bonded for $50,000 and sometimes per mile, which is equivalent today to more than $75,000 per mile. The Eastern roads, such as the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania, did not require more money to keep up to the times. Then, too, through travel is the business which enriches a railroad; it is the local business.

'The Southern Pacific has some of its road bonded for $100,000 per mile, but the people of California are not pleased with the way they have been treated and the new rival road is very likely to be constructed.'

There are very few better railroad men in the United States than Mr. Egan. The position he occupied during the great railroad strike, which Mr. Debs talked about last night, brought him before the public as the leader of the forces which faced the strikers until they were forced to admit defeat. Mr. Egan is an unassuming man; last night he was dressed in an ordinary business suit of gray and wore a negligee shirt. He has worked up to his present position from messenger boy in the railway service.