A Weekend with Pay

Here's weekend work that will help win the war. Business and professional men, clerks, college students, farmers, all able-bodied men . . . you are urgently needed to work on S[outhern P[acific] tracks in this vicinity. . . . Help win the war, get healthy outdoor exercise and be paid for it.

Three hundred newspapers in seven western States are carrying this help-wanted ad to lure white collar men to the railroads—to tamp ballast, replace ties, hoist the heavy rails. As war cargoes ride the rails and troopships wait at the railheads, workers on the roadbeds are needed more and more. But before it advertised for white-collar hands, Southern Pacific cautiously experimented.

At Davis and. Palo Alto, Calif., the experiment last week rated four stars. Two hundred clerks, university students and professors worked as gandy dancers (section hands). For eight and a half hours' work they collected $6.40. Said one of them, Veterinary Science Professor Hugh S. Cameron: "Along about Sunday afternoon you know you've been working."

Other weekend workers were equally undaunted. Said Storekeeper Floyd Bagley: "It's good exercise." Accountant Grover Lowe: "I've got a boy in England and another up north. . . . This gives me a chance to do something." Verne Hickey, Chamber of Commerce president: "Merely a matter of changing a golf stick for a shovel . . . Didn't even have to change my stance much. . . ."

Amazed but pleased was hard-bitten Track Foreman Tom Stamos, as he watched his students and clerks and professional men handle the heavy rails under the hot western sun. "They work,— how they work!"