INCE the advent of sociological betterment work throughout the country an increasing number of agencies have become engaged in rendering practical help to the workman.

The faithful laborer is worthy of his hire. He has rights which the employer respects.

The present trend is convincing in its effort to improve the relations between the employer and the employed. Many corporations are taking up this work and find that it pays.

The benefits, for instance, of work as carried on by a manufacturer to the end that homes and cities may be made more beautiful, and love inculcated for comfortable surroundings, may be esthetic, yet has its effect. The results are not immediate to the profits of the business, but one

of the indirect helps is the contented workman who, amid pleasant surroundings, is loth to quit the service of the company. Stability of the working force is a factor in the productivity of the plant. The corporation that is leavening its regard for employes with a little interest in their personal welfare, a little practical application of the Golden Rule, is finding out that public sympathy is with the employer who treats employes well.

Off-hand, it is difficult to realize the degree of success that has been attained in the application of personal work on railroad system, numbered among the first systems of the country, and one of the factors in the development of the Pacific Coast, with thirteen thousand miles of track, gridironing a third of the area of the country, linking the Gulf, the Great Lakes and two Pacific ports, and controlling an army of forty thousand people. This is the Santa Fe Railway. Of all

business corporations, a railroad company may be expected to be the last to expend a hundred thousand dollars a year for its employes-unless it pays.

This the Santa Fe does. It has the It has the best-informed specialist in the United States in its employ-a man who has worked up to the place he occupies and whose niche in the Hall of Fame will be among the pioneers of this new era of economics. His code is this:

"By seeking their (the employes') moral, physical and financial betterment a greater measure of contentment may be achieved, and the motive for seeking their welfare and happiness lies intimate to the success of the operation of the entire system, the perfecting of the service; the reward and encouragement of faithfulness in service. By making our men comfortable, intelligent, self-reliant, by building up their aspirations we protect our property and business. The management recognizes that we are one family-the success of one is the success of all. We close a good deal of the gap between the high executive official and the man 'way out on the line; we avoid disastrous changes in the service and, incidentally, assure our men a life job and better conditions; by affording them actual opportunities of self-development, or bettering their education, we contribute to home-making, a truer, higher civic condition, and we would like to have our men bound to the company by ties of regard rather than those of necessity."

In this there is a reward, for the everyday toiler, no matter how humble his work. Believe in yourself, and the cause you work for, and all the time individually aim higher-these are the doctrines of the Santa Fe propaganda. For several years past other railroad systems have watched the experiment with the greatest curiosity, while the scheme, year by year, has been enlarged. The improvement and extension of the libraries and reading

rooms has gone forward unostentatiously for eight years and today it is more securely than ever a permanent institution.

Not all of the army of men in this company's service can live at favored places. Many of them must exist in wild waste places on the frontier, in the mountains, on the sand-whipped deserts, making the best of it in inhospitable division points, far removed from the comforts of civilization. Arizona and New Mexico are rich in historic interest and made pleasantly accessible to the tourist, for no other part of the Southwest is more interesting than those scenic sections where traces are slowly disappearing of the prehistoric races. Heroic was the effort to establish a transcontinental railroad through these regions, difficulties more aggravated, possibly, than on any other route, because of the climatic changes, the long and constant search for water and the unwelcoming areas of desert lying beyond the Mexican mesas. From the Raton pass and the grades of the Glorietta ranges, to the Tehachapis, the gate to the Golden State, there is no play at railroading. The kind of labor required to handle the great stream of through-bound traffic must be of the highest qualifications and, while a ride through the country is a thing every lover of American scenery should have, at the same time living in such a section is intolerably monot

onous.

At the division points of the road, not alone in the water-tank stations but throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, this company has provided certain incentives for the railroad boys to be good, to keep their heads clear, to save their money,

to sleep in sanitary, decent quarters at the end of a run, to indulge in sane recreation-and keep away from the bar-room and the gambling joint-building up a higher individuality and making, consequently, for greater steadfastness and efficiency.

I have visited most of these rest establishments, talked with the men, and when I described the workings of the system to certain officials in New York City, a rich manufacturer of New York exclaimed: "That's the biggest temperance argument I ever heard."

The work began with the establishment of small smoking and reading rooms, near the stations at one or two towns down in Kansas. Now the rooms have grown into dignified, cosy buildings, built by the company, on ground specially selected for the purpose, with modern conveniences throughout. About twenty cities have these structures, neatly surrounded with grass plots, potted flowers in the windows, and an inviting, homelike air over all. The rooms are scrupulously clean and the interiors are bright-contrasting strongly with the grime and the cinders of the yards. In these rooms are

libraries of books on all sorts of subjects, proof not being wanting that something besides fiction is in demand. The employes are great patrons of technical works. Here, too, are billiard tables, all the periodicals, writing rooms, bath rooms and a large assembly room. In this latter room entertainments are held; after a show, composed of the best talent the lyceum bureaus send out, a dance is given.

In New Mexico the foundations are laid for the best structure yet attempted. This represents the acme of attainment had in mind by the company when it commissioned Superintendent of Reading Rooms, Mr. Samuel E. Russer, to outline a plan for libraries and rest rooms, and to add to it not only entertainment, but practical instruction for all who desired

This building will contain a large number of sleeping rooms, bath rooms, a library with a homelike fireplace, a billiard room, a bowling alley and other amusements. Billiards and beds in this club-house will cost the men a mere pittance. For these advantages there is no tax, no toll on salaries, no obligations to the company. The reading rooms and libraries have become the center of rail

road men's gatherings, and the character of the occasional entertainments have risen in dignity and value in the larger towns of the great southwestern empire states. Now the public eagerly accepts the broadcast invitation to attend the lectures, music recitals, monologues, famous lectures, discourses upon the latest advancement of science and the world's work, interspersed with specialties of an elevating character.

Ninety per cent of the employes regularly use the books of the libraries.

Encyclopedias, dictionaries, manuals and the best known text books on a wide variety of subjects are called for. All standard works are represented and the latest standard fiction is on the shelves within a few weeks after the publishers' announcements. When a new book of a practical kind is asked for it is forthwith supplied. The off-hours of the boys are spent either with their families or in the reading rooms where, at all hours, may be found a sociable game of cards, or billiards in progress. As fast as possible more rigorous recreations are being added to the headquarters-gymnastic exercises in a room set apart for that purpose, bowling, etc., where the men can not only enjoy themselves but indulge in physical practice that will relieve unused muscles.

Oakland has a reading room that cannot accommodate all the people who want admission when there is a stereopticon lecture on. Seligman, Arizona, has a perfectly appointed club-house always occupied by reason of the fact that it is a lay-over point for a great many of the men away from home on their runs. At Albuquerque and Emporia the reading rooms are considered indispensable to the social life of a considerable portion of the working population.

If a man shows capability along a special line he is encouraged to develop that bent. Any course of study he desires will be provided by the company. What is equally important, early opportunity is afforded the man to demonstrate his knowledge. to his fellows.

One of the most absorbingly interesting lectures that has ever been my pleasure to hear best illustrates what the Santa Fe accomplishes among its people. The engineer of the Stockton local is Dick Collett, who was "raised" on the Santa Fe

road, and while from his cab he can relate many interesting things about his experiences with a big engine, it never entered his head that he could tell this entainingly to others, illustrating the points with stereopticon pictures. Collett was an intelligent, earnest reader of useful works when Superintendent Busser hit upon him for the development of all his special knowledge regarding the locomotive. Collett was encouraged to read up on all the histories and works on locomotives. He digested all the text books could offer upon the subject and then prepared a lecture on the "History and Progress of the Locomotive and the World's Relation to It." This lecture was rehearsed for six months. Collett had never essayed to put his thoughts into written or vocal speech. It was a novel experience to him but Superintendent Busser is a man of remarkable inspirational powers, and under his tutoring the speech was trimmed down to fit a program that was further enlivened with solos from Williams, a trumpeter of the London Philharmonic Society. The engineer was so full of his topic that he faced without stage fright the boys at the reading-room halls. You may be sure everybody turned out to hear and see the lecturer with a hundred or more pictures which brought clearly forth the origin and development of the locomotive, and were interspersed with many interesting experiences-pathetic, humorous and thrilling. Crowded houses met him everywhere. After the lecture tour, Collett went back to the throttle and declared that he had had the best vacation he ever had in his life.

That demonstration of the usefulness of the means and agencies generously given by the company for self-development of its employes marked a strong impression upon the men. Let a railroad man's wife or daughter but disclose a bit of ability to entertain and their debut is easy and sure. Superintendent Busser believes he may yet bring forth a prima donna from the ranks of the railroaders.

Other specialties have been developed. A clever Newton telegraph operator, growing restless under the strain of his monotonous position, got up an explanatory lecture on wireless telegraphy. Roundhouse quartettes, that would put the blush on some vaunted vaudeville entertainers, and