industrial integrity was endangered. For example, it made little difference to the Fitchburg Railroad Company whether factory A or factory B received the first visit from the switchengine in the morning, but as soon as the proprietors or foremen of a dozen factories began to bribe the conductor in order to secure priority of service and other favors, a quiet system of graft was introduced that finally developed into a most astonishing state of affairs.

For a time the conductor in question avoided and tried to dodge the temptation; but the pressure was too great, and he ended by working the situation for all it was worth, and in his hands it proved to be worth a good deal. Before long, from one of the largest plants in the neighborhood he was in receipt of a regular salary. From other firms, at intervals, he received donations of pocket-money, hams, milk, wood, coal, and ice, according to his requirements; and if he needed anything in the way of hardware or pottery, all he had to do was to visit the factories and help himself. After a while, in collecting these assessments, in which the whole train crew sometimes shared, the conductor enlisted the service of one of his brakemen. This man had nearly as many side-lines as the conductor; his job on the railroad, however, did not prevent him from being, at the same time, a call member of the Cambridge fire department.

But opportunity and encouragement for enterprise of this kind could not be confined to the limits of a freight-yard, or a single city. The conductor soon entered the political arena. Every once in a while he took a trip to Washington in the interests of a postmaster, a congressman, or a senator. Then the management of the Fitchburg Railroad itself got mixed in the muddle. Just how, no man could tell, for Breakers went round with his finger on his

lips saying, 'Hush,' to everybody. His little trips to Washington and elsewhere did not interfere in any way with the pay that was coming to him every week as conductor of the switcher. This was certainly a very strange state of affairs. But the most demoralizing effect of political and other interference in the railroad business has yet to be mentioned.

One afternoon, the switch-engine with a few cars, in charge of this conductor, taking a flying trip into the city, hit the rear of an express passenger train ahead, which had slowed up a little at Somerville. It was on the programme to discharge the entire crew, but Conductor Breakers pulled too many strings. Until the men were quietly returned to their jobs, the office of the superintendent was besieged with delegations, committees and professional people representing, it was calculated, fully a third of the voting population of Charlestown. I was able to keep track of these events pretty closely from the fact that during this period I was acting as clerk to the superintendent of the road, and as such I had charge of the pay-rolls and had every opportunity to take note of the proceedings. But I never met a man who could say that he was able to fathom the mystery of Conductor Breakers and his manœuvres. His lack of education was a bar to his personal preferment. His specialty was getting jobs for other people, or making them believe he was busy in their interests. This, it seems, was sufficient, in railroad and political circles at any rate, to keep nearly everybody in tow.

This situation, of course, is bygone history, but it gives one a good idea how questionable practices began on railroads. It also illustrates the share which society itself had in the encouragement of practices which are now being so strenuously condemned.

The second group of railroad men at West Cambridge was altogether of a different class, or variety. Surely there must have been something industrially healthy and significant in the situation when we come to consider that, regardless of conditions and wages at this point on the railroad, a dozen workers held together year in and year out, and can now show records ranging from twenty to forty years of unbroken and satisfactory service. A questionable situation, I suppose, to some progressive people, who recognize no condition as sound that is not forever on the jump toward something different and prospectively better. Such people have little appreciation for conditions or individuals in this world that wisely slow up or stand still for inspirational purposes. But, apart from all comment on the situation, the facts themselves at West Cambridge are decidedly interesting.

All told, there were seven trackmen, two gatemen, and three towermen in this little group. The towermen received about thirteen dollars a week, the others about eight dollars. There were seven days in the working week, but remuneration for work on Sunday, in those days, was definitely forbidden by orders from headquarters. To find the amount that was due for work of a single day, however, the weekly wage was invariably divided by seven.

While the working conditions of the towerman, then, considering the importance of his duties, were not altogether satisfactory, those of the trackman, of course, were very much worse. And yet the results under these conditions, both to society and to the railroad, were certainly remarkable. The record of each individual in this group of workers was about the same as my own, and so I am speaking for the

group when I say that, personally, in thirty years' service, I never received a letter, or was asked a single question that could be construed into a reflection on conduct or work. Industrially, under conditions which in part I have described, the records of these men were all right; socially they were still better.

Of the original group, with possibly one exception, each individual owns, or did own, his little home. One of these men, a trackman, actually built the frame of his dwelling-house himself. The families of these workers ranged from three to ten children to the household; most of these children are now grown up and can hold their own with any, it matters not who they may be, in the community. These children grew up under my eyes. They were well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, well-educated, and perfectly healthy. It is not too much to say that the best results were derived from the lowest wage and the keenest struggle. Leaving the towermen out of the calculation, the results I have mentioned were obtained on a weekly income, per individual, of less than eight dollars.

Once upon a time one of these men had a case in court. He owned a tenement house in Somerville, and his case had something to do with the collection of his rents. Referring to his low wages and his real-estate holdings, the judge put this question to him: 'How do you do it?' The man answered, 'Your Honor, that's my secret.'

In industrial circles, as elsewhere, secrets of this kind have usually a good deal to do with the character and disposition of the 'boss.' The section foreman at West Cambridge was, and is, in many ways, a remarkable man. As I look at it, the force of his unassuming yet strong personality kept a gang of men together for something like a quarter of a century. He is the

greatest living compliment to the principles of industrial honesty that I ever met. He is strict in a way, yet he never scolds. He is a tall, rugged man of the Lincoln type, just as much at home among his men digging out the switches in the teeth of a blizzard of snow, as he is in the company of notables at a masonic gathering. Among his fellows on the railroad, to mention Delvy is to praise him.

Because it will conduct me along the lines of my own progress at West Cambridge, and at the same time throw a little light on the 'secrets' of these rugged personalities in railroad life, I shall try to draw a pen portrait of one of Delvy's men.

Take Dan, for example. His arrival at West Cambridge preceded my own by a year or two. At all times he seemed to have his work on his mind; and at night, in stormy weather, he frequently came down to the tower of his own accord, just to assure himself that everything was in good working order. To begin with, he was a section-hand pure and simple. His duty was, in part, to walk over and inspect a section of track the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

He and his family had the West Cambridge'secret,' in a marked degree. It consisted of all sorts of little economies, even to the extent of picking up waste lumber, splitting ties for fuel, and working at all sorts of odd jobs in the neighborhood at break of dawn, and sometimes far into the night. In all kinds of work the children lent a hand. Then there were hens and a little gardening as side-lines; and besides, when it came to a pinch, if I am not mistaken, the boys could cobble their own shoes, and the only daughter in the family could make her own dresses.

It is easy to understand what a quantity of character was wrapped up in a situation of this kind. In the process of

improving working conditions by organization and otherwise, is it possible to retain the sterling characteristics for which Dan and his type were distinguished? Will education and industrial enlightenment take care of the issue? The world to-day is asking this question.

In course of time Dan's duties on the railroad became more responsible, but there was no change for the better in his income. When, thanks to the efforts of their brotherhood, the towermen were relieved of all out-of-door duties at West Cambridge, Dan fell heir to the adjusting tools, the lamps, and the oil-cans. In this way, quite frequently nowadays, the man lower down feels the pinch of a 'raise' or a lift higher up. But Dan and his fellows kept right along ploddingly. His natural ability and ingenuity along mechanical lines were remarkable. His educational opportunities, however, had been few. In fact, in some directions, he was decidedly superstitious.

Somehow, I always looked upon this characteristic as one of his virtues. In actual contact with life, his superstition was of as much practical value as libraries of book-learning are to some people. This is philosophy in accordance with the facts. In dealing with his fellow men Dan was as honest as the hills are solid. His superstition had something to do with his behavior. In the course of years of trackwalking, it is no exaggeration to say that Dan picked up, in the aggregate, two or three hundred dollars in the form of cash and jewelry. As it seemed to me, he was always unaccountably restless until the property was safely returned to the owners. Dan's philosophy of honesty was unique as well as refreshing. One day he explained its fundamentals to me somewhat as follows:

In the old country, when he was a

boy, a gentleman in a hurry thrust a coin into his hand as a fee for carrying a trunk. When Dan got home he found a sovereign in his pocket. As Dan looked at it, the man, in the dusk of the evening, had made a mistake. By rights the coin should have been a shilling. For several days the goldpiece actually burned in his pocket. But what could he do? And besides, he was sadly in need of a new pair of shoes. After a week of mental distress he finally purchased a pair. As he was leaving the store he stumbled over a black cat. This put the finishing touch to his mental agitation. But he could not work in his bare feet, so the boots had to be worn. As Dan tells the story, the first day he wore them the boots were fairly comfortable; the second day they pinched a little; on the third day they were positively painful; and then, after spending the fourth day in agony, he placed the cursed things in a bag with a rock for a weight and threw them into the lake. From that day Dan's ideas of the sacred rights of property were unshakable.

But Dan was one of nature's humorists, as well as a preceptor of morals. For years, just before going to work in the morning, he was in the habit of paying a flying visit to the tower to snatch a glance at the newspapers. Dan had a habit of reading the head-lines out loud, with a comment or two slipped in between. He invariably began with the weather report, the heading of which, as Dan read it out, was always, 'For Boston and vacancy.'

Dan was also the regulator of the tower clock, and once in a while he came in to adjust what he called its 'penundulum.' Furthermore, he had some knowledge of herbs and wild flowers, and possessed among other medicinal secrets an infallible remedy for 'information of the bladder.' VOL. 110-NO. 3

VI

But apart from questions relating to character and its conservation, which naturally come to the front from my description of the rugged and ready material engaged in the railroad business at East Deerfield and West Cambridge, there is another feature of the situation that is also of universal importance: I refer to the conservation of authority.

At a time when the attitude of powerful labor organizations toward discipline on railroads was being freely discussed in the public prints, Mr. Roosevelt, then President, wrote this little sermon on the subject:

"The wage-worker who does not do well at his job shows that he lacks selfrespect. He ought to wish to do well because he respects himself. Remember, too, that ordinarily the rich man cannot harm you unless you harm yourself. If you are content with your standard of living until somebody else comes in with a higher standard of living, then the harm the other man has done to you comes because of your own yielding to weakness and envy. If your heart is stout enough you won't feel it.

"The labor union has done great and needed work for the betterment of the laboring man; but where it has worked against his individual efficiency as a worker it has gone wrong, and the wrong must be remedied. On railroads, for instance, we should not tolerate any interference with the absolute right of a superintendent to discharge a man. There should be no requirement to show cause. The man who is a little inefficient or a little careless and is left in the service, is apt finally to be responsible for some great disaster; and there should not be the slightest interference, or attempted interference, with the right of a superintendent to

turn such a man out. Where a labor union works to decrease the average efficiency of the worker it cannot in the long run escape being detrimental to the community as a whole, and, in the real interest of organized labor, this should not be permitted.'

In the light of the facts as they are to-day, railroad men will certainly not look upon this little sermon as a very progressive announcement. Be this as it may, I wish to make Mr. Roosevelt's ideas on the conservation of authority the text of this final section of this chapter.

Of course this autobiography should be, in the main, an experience and not an argument. Nevertheless, the story would certainly lose most of its significance if the writer lacked convictions, or if he failed to take to himself, and whenever possible to impart to others, as best he could according to his light, the lesson to be derived from passing

events.

Combining a consideration of public problems then, with the history of my personal progress in the surroundings of a switch-tower, I turn again, very briefly, to what may be called the adventures of Dan. From the early East Deerfield days, this man, representing industrial integrity, was the type which, at any rate, formed the ground plan of the service with which I was associated. Society, of course, is interested in perpetuating the characteristics of this type, and directly in line with the desires and efforts of society in this direction come those problems connected with authority.

Dan, then, was not only socially and industrially successful, but he was also a hero. In the year 1893, I think it was, a heavy freight train crashed into and telescoped a passenger train right in front of the station at West Cambridge. Five passengers were killed, and about thirty were seriously in

jured. A signal and a flag were against the freight train, but they were both unseen or disregarded. Dan, who lived only a few yards from the station, heard the crash and hurried to the scene. The engine of the freight train ploughed its way clear through the rear coach and was belching a torrent of steam into the next one ahead, when Dan, disregarding the warning shouts of the bystanders, scrambled, with a coat over his head, into the blazing coach. While the crowd hung back, terror-stricken, Dan dragged a number of women and young people to safety through the hissing steam. In after days, notably at Christmastime, he received tokens of grateful remembrance from many of these people, and in this way his personal satisfaction in his own deed has been kept alive from year to year.

To the men in the signal-tower at West Cambridge, however, this collision of trains, with resulting loss of life, was no mystery. They knew all about the signals, the flags, and the conditions under which they were operated. They were also daily witnesses of the efforts of the management, in the interest of safety, to enforce the principle of implicit obedience in the face of a rising tide of aggressive industrial assertiveness which, at the time, was backed up in various ways by public opinion. In this particular instance the coroner, one or two judges, and the newspapers, united in placing all the blame for the accident upon the management of the railroad. The fact was lost sight of that every railroad in the country was suffering from the same trouble at the same time, with similar results.

No substitute has been proposed by these, or any other critics, to take the place of obedience to rules, and the exercise of authority in connection therewith. Be this as it may, this accident