Adams] SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 129 



Locally earned income, from wages and all other sources, accounted 

 for 34.2 percent of Slionto's earnings in 1955 (table 21). For the 

 remaining two-thirds of its livelihood the community depended 

 entirely on the outside world. 



BAILROAD WORK 



Shonto's overwhelming reliance upon seasonal railroad work, to the 

 virtual exclusion of all other off-reservation employment, is indicated 

 in table 21. The combination of wages and miemployment compensa- 

 tion from the railroad accounted for just over half the community's 

 total income in 1955. Nevertheless, railroad work remains a supple- 

 mentary activity in Shonto's economic scheme, spelling the difference 

 in actuality as well as in theory between bare subsistence and a com- 

 fortable material standard of living. 



Kailroad work for Navahos means maintenance of way (track) 

 labor. At Shonto in nearly all cases it is a matter of employment in 

 seasonal extra gangs on the A.T. & S.F. Kail way. 



All major railroads rely chiefly on extra gangs for maintenance of 

 way. (The function of section gangs, which are housed permanently 

 along the right-of-way, is confined to track inspection and small, 

 routine maintenance jobs.) Extra gangs are employed when and 

 where major maintenance or construction is needed; the nature of 

 operating conditions in the West is such that large numbers of them 

 are always on the road every year, primarily during the summer 

 months of good weather. 



Extra gangs are recruited annually from a standing labor pool. 

 Employees are shipped at the railroad's expense to an assigned work- 

 site where their gang is in operation. The gang is housed and fed 

 in way cars along the right of way, for which a daily pay deduction 

 of about $2.00 is made. The gang remains in operation usually for 

 3 or 4 months, or until its assigned project is completed, after which 

 it is dissolved and the men are paid off. The standard work week 

 for extra gangs is 40 hours, at a base pay rate (on the Santa Fe) 

 of $1.54 per hour. Many gangs are called out for emergency right- 

 of-way repairs, however, and in such cases overtime may bring the 

 total week's work to as high as 70 hours. Time-and-a-half is allowed 

 for all overtime work. 



In recent years most Shonto men have worked in extra gangs 

 along the isolated desert sections of the Santa Fe Eailway, between 

 Kingman, Ariz., and Barstow and Mojave, Calif., where the rail- 

 road has undertaken an extensive program of double-tracking and 

 right-of-way realinement. Employment is open to all able-bodied 

 men between the ages of 21 and 50, with no education requirement 

 of any kind. Shonto's men nearly always work in all-Navaho gangs, 

 where Navaho is the only language of cormnunication. Even in 



