and capable, and if he had no bad luck, came, in course of time, to "have a train." If he was bright mentally, if he chanced to come under the favorable observation of some one in authority, or if he "managed" things wisely, he possibly "got a passenger run." After awhile, when they happened to need a man in the yard, perhaps he was called to look after things, and if fortunate, was kept there, or sent to a more important one. Once started and brought to notice, promotion followed. Possibly his preferment was due to an observed readiness in emergencies. But sometimes mental habits fail to keep pace with preferment. A division superintendent not long removed from his caboose, who received a set of papers regarding a serious claim for damage, scanned the three or four papers last attached, and in the usual perfunctory manner endorsed them, "Car handled carefully and no damage done on this division;" was surprised by their return to him with a personal note of inquiry regarding a previous report from himself, showing the car smashed to splinters. His mental habits hadn't kept pace with his promotion, but his habit of meeting emergencies didn't fail him. He said: "I can't face that; too bad a break; papers go into the stove." And they did. When asked for, they were reported lost. The man who was ready to meet the emergency, but whose courage was not equal to admitting his carelessness, put the company to the added expense of duplicating the investigation, at the disadvantage due to lack of some original papers, the delay inviting the disgust of the claimants, and possibly loss of their patronage.

Or, as a boy, the aspirant went into the office of the agent at a little country-side station. The attention he got was in the nature of directions to deliver messages and notices of arrival of freight. He saw goods loaded and unloaded; was set to copying way-bills; observed the manifold details of the little office, where one man is "it"-clerk, ticket agent, freight agent, operator, mail carrier, announcer of trains, and the legal representative of the company, upon whom the service of writs of the courts is as effective as if made upon the president of the corporation. He gathered, as he grew, a good idea of many things; a dim one of many others. There was no definite, detailed, well-formulated but condensed cyclopedia from which to obtain much information essential to him in meeting

calls upon him in his varied capacities. Yet he learned much, and followed the lines of least resistance, or if with a definite object, if of the right stuff, he overcame the obstacles, moving upward with the enlargement of his information and the increased ability to meet manifold requirements. If he did not always know which was the better, he covered his failures as best he might, and strove forward, his advancement according with opportunity, capacity, ability, favor, as the case might be.

Possibly beginning as a messenger boy, gradually, and without much attention from any one, he picked up the art of sending and receiving off the wire; with increasing service got a better job, which he used toward increasing his available information; developed as he grew, became "dispatcher," and with good fortune won merited promotion.

Or, he started in as a water-boy on the section, progressed through the several stages, which need not be enumerated, until he became chief engineer or general superintendent, as the newspapers announce of an official promoted during the current month. To be sure, mental training is necessary for a chief engineer; it is in any one properly fitted to hold a position of responsibility, and the boy who succeeds and "goes along up," gets it in some way. Just how, in the ways we are enumerating, has not always been apparent. That he got there seems to be evidence sufficient that he had it.

Or, our boy got a place as cub among the car repairers, blooming out in the fulness of time as master workman, and as the M. C. B. himself. A scientific analysis of the structure of his cars would have been "entirely too many" for him, of course. His predecessors built cars in such a way and the cars had been good enough so far; they were still good enough, and they continued to be.

Or, he got into the machine shop, picking up a bit of experience here, another there, until he became the M. M. To be sure, he might be absolutely empty of the scientific principles involved in or governing the machinery he controlled; have never given serious thought to the betterment of conditions which he found existing; the fact remains that he "had got there." And being "there," he was looked up to and his opinion sought, his influence often growing with his years and the success of his road. This may be thought exaggerated, but the writer within a sixmonth has conversed with a gentleman

writing M. M. after his name, who, in discussing the use of compressed air as a motor for vehicles, suggested that by a suitable arrangement of pumps on the axle, the mechanism, after having its reservoirs duly charged, could, by its own motion, keep up the supply under pressure indefinitely. Upon realizing that this was seriously meant and not a play on his credulity, the writer remarked that the day of perpetual motion had not yet dawned, and switched the conversation to another topic.

A fairly bright youth might be taken into a contracting freight office, or general freight or passenger office. He learned how to do many things, each little, but aggregating much. Was able after awhile to tell from the tariff sheets what rates to quote, answer questions in an emergency. He moved along with the increase of years and of picked-up information until he became the C. A. himself, possibly the A. G. F. A., then the G. F. A. or the G. P. A., as the case might be. Perhaps he got an inkling of some underlying principles; more probably not-until they were banged into him. His teaching, such as he had, was generally along the line of "getting the business." It was not so much how he got it as that he did get it when it was impressed upon him. He made many acquaintances, and of these he boasted, as a sort of stock in trade; indeed, in many eyes this appeared almost the same as a funded capital. Maybe some one who had a cheaplybuilt "short line," somewhere between unimportant points, put him in charge of traffic-and he "got it." At the end of the fiscal year he showed, with great pride, his tonnage or his total passengers carried; left last year's traffic out of sight. But, strangely enough, the earnings hadn't doubled with the doubling of the business done. One first principle he had never learned: That the business of a carrier is the sale of its product, and that its product is transportation, a commodity-a commodity just as much as wheat, or flour, or lumber, or cotton; that on the difference between what it costs and what he can obtain for the carriage depends the success or failure of the carrier's business. He hadn't a glimmering idea of the cost of carriage of goods or the passengers he solicited; of the adequacy of the rates he made; of any of the principles which he should have been taught, or which he should have had an opportunity of acquiring, so he "pointed with pride." But the thinking

man looked at the debit side, and at the profit and loss account, and found himself wondering if the road was operated for amusement, or whether they were possibly in it for their health.

So it ran through all the departmentsconstruction, maintenance, bridge-building, stations, in all their ramifications of buildings, yards, tracks, appliances of all kinds, shops, operations, everything. If one had an ideal of any kind, in any direction, he was an exception so marked as to be a "crank," or else he kept his ideal to himself while seeking to secure the improvement which he believed would be beneficial to the road. He didn't "give it away." Many who had such ideas and ideals had something of the "born, not made," in them. Those made by the rule of thumb processes mentioned gained somewhat on those who had preceded; but most of them succeeded by doing in a better way the things done by those whom they followed.

It appears, upon looking over the field of the last quarter-century that we owe a good deal to the narrow-gauge craze. The manner in which the arguments and theories of its promotion knocked out the standard gauge as to equipment was excelled only by their assumptions regarding the superiority of their own gauge. But it had a marvelously good effect on railroad economics in some directions. If half or two-thirds of the material in a standard-gauge car, put into a narrowgauge car of better design and proportions, could be made to carry as great a load as the standard car carried, the standard-gauge people saw the possibility of rearranging their proportions and without largely increasing car weights doubling their capacity. That seems to have been the beginning of the development which has brought us to where we fear further enlargement in this direction. The same may be said of locomotives. They have grown with the growth of the cars, and with both have grown the rails and the bridges, until we don't know where to say stop.

With that comes another thought. We have steadily made the rail heavier; we have changed its section. Have we reached the ideal? When the road was built from Baltimore to Washington, of short bits of iron laid from one stone post to another (for that is substantially what it was) the result led to the declaration that what was needed was flexibility; that rigidity was destructive of the rolling stock, etc. Flexibility was secured

by laying stringers upon ties, then facing the upper edges with strips of iron. The development of the iron industry evolved the rail and the direct tie system eliminating the stringer. The T rail followed, but we have clung to the idea that flexibility is an essential. Is it not possible that the earlier deduction from the premises was an erroneous one? That the trouble encountered was a lack of rigidity of a uniform character? That they had flexibility in spots, and that the machinery suffered when it hit the posts, and because it hit the posts, instead of having a bed entirely of posts? May it not be possible that with a rail so made and laid that flexibility is absolutely eliminated, wear and tear of certain kinds will be reduced to a minimum? We have grown so far from the scrimpy little iron industry of the early day that we should be able to put from us the ideas derived from the primitive track, and develop something which shall be abreast of the progress in other lines of railroad evolution. Why not consider a roadbed of concrete, with girder rails, embedded well, for all permanent way outside of yards? Why not secure the joints by a method which not only holds up the rail-end which the load is leaving, but equally holds up that to which it is moving? Can not the form of rail be improved? The designers have given us sections; the wheel makers have furnished us a tread and a flange. The wear consequent upon use has modified each, and we wonder if a section and a tread can not be designed more nearly approximating the resultant given us by this use, that we can have in the improved permanent way an ideal which we have so far not attained.

The railroad of to-day is the result of evolution. Everything in, on, or about it has changed from what it was in its incipiency. Possibly the fittest has survived, but we know that nothing which is came to us, Minerva-like, fully developed, filling the ideal, with no want to be supplied and no improvement possible. Change has been the order of the day, of the week, of the year. Progress or decay have been the alternatives. But when is our change to be made? We learn that after a certain point is reached, in age, in wear, in depreciation, it may be better to throw away a locomotive, a car, a boiler, a lathe; but do we learn that when a certain point is reached in improvement it is cheaper to replace good with better, and how are we to know just where that point is? How are we

to know what to put into our scrap-pile?

Mr. President, I have not in all this for one moment lost sight of my text, "The making of a man!" The men who have reached the top are not available for other than the roads which have them; they will be held onto. They have been taught in the primary school and advanced grades of experience. Of late years many have come to the front who have had advantages of more or less technical instruction in various branches which go to make up the entirety of railroad construction, maintenance, operation and management. The technical instruction has been supplemented by practical experience in their specialties; the wider the experience accompanying adaptability (which should follow its natural bent, if possible) the more likely the success in a given direction. But ability is not always untrammeled, nor a subordinate free to choose that which his judgment best approves. For example:

A quarter century ago (not a long time to the writer) a line was necessary through a suburb to connect with a newly-built union station. Several routes were available. The engineer adopted that which the amateur president directed, but he first protested that they "might as well take half a million and put it in the fire." The president shortly replied, "We will burn it, then," and the road was built. It cost twice as much as that recommended by the engineer. It has answered its purpose but poorly. There is now building, on the route preferred by the engineer, a new belt line. It will cost five times what such a line could then have been built for. It will be worth ten times the value of the old one. And it belongs to another company, while the proper location originally would have given the old company the field to itself.

The engineer was right, the president wrong. The right man was not in authority.

In later years we have seen improvement in most that has been mentioned. Books have been written covering the technicalities of some of the varied departments. A stray college or university has been established where theory has been taught with practical exemplification. Correspondence schools have grown up and afforded means by which much can be learned of theory while by practice the student is earning a livelihood, a thing undreamed of up to a recent past. Many roads furnish "catechisms" for the use of those who desire promotion in cer

tain lines, and where correct information is essential to intelligent service, but the number of these roads is limited, and the catechisms are more limited than the roads, for they treat only upon a few of the varied departments. Those who are ambitious, sufficiently well informed to know where to search, and earnest enough to persist, can find books which will aid them, but all leave some gaps to be bridged. Can any one of the club name, even after considerable thought, a series of books available to one desiring to make himself familiar with the best usages and theories of the various departments and subdepartments of railroading-that is, such a series as would substantially cover these departments-or can any one of the club tell where to find such a list?

Mr. President and gentlemen, the young men growing up, entering the service, getting what instruction and information they can with practice in their daily experiences, would be the better for instruction from what has been already published. Does it not seem that it would be well, that it would be profitable, for every road to procure and have for distribution catalogues of publications bearing on theories and practice in the branches of the profession? The word "profession" is used advisedly. Does it not seem desirable that every company prepare or obtain, if it is possible, papers which cover fully every branch of its service employing large numbers, from which could be learned by each of them not only what is expected of him, but why one method of doing is to be preferred to another method? Instead of the haphazard "rule of thumb," may it not be well to have their intelligence, natural as well as acquired by experience, supplemented by the wisdom contained in books; gleanings from the experiences of many, garnered and winnowed until the chaff is cleared away and sound wheat only left for bread of the kind for which their hunger craves the bread of an intelligent understanding of how best to do the things those employing them wish done?

In practice, now, we base selections on inherent ability, on energy, on ambition, on favoritism, on chance observation, of those who are advanced from grade to grade, ultimately reaching dominating positions with the transportation lines of this vast country. By substituting for the old, slipshod, unmethodical practice which has been elaborated for illustration, an enlightened, intelligent furnishing of

information, in the manner indicated, about every branch of railroading as a profession, not one whit will be abated from the natural ability or adaptability of any man entering the service; energy will be increased because properly directed; ambition will be fostered, even favoritism will be profited in its selection for promotion, while if an intelligent supervision could be secured over the studies and education of all who endeavor to improve, those charged with choosing between them would be helped by the opportunity afforded for a closer observation and insight.

Poets may be born; the successful railroad man may have an inherent adaptability for his profession, but he has, after all, to be made, in which making systematic, painstaking, methodical effort will improve the output. The more the roads can do toward effecting what is suggested as desirable, the more likely the success of their "construction, equipment, maintenance and management," because the resultant is more likely to be the railroad man who knows, and who knows, too, why he knows.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think this is an extremely interesting paper, and that it should bring forth some remarks from the members. There is one idea particularly in the paper that I think could be discussed, and that is in regard to the advisability of using a 6-foot gauge, broadening our standard gauge. This is an age of constant change and evolution, and I believe that the present tendency is toward heavier engines and heavier loads; that this will eventually compel us to adopt a 6-foot gauge and go back to first principles. I believe the first railroad in this country had a 6-foot gauge, with flat iron straps on longitudinal stringers, instead of cross-ties, which was not a success, as it lacked rigidity, which to a certain extent is desirable; but we do not want extreme rigidity, so that it is necessary for us to put ballast on the track to relieve the rails. We have now reached the physical limit of the track to support the load, and it looks as though we will be compelled to resort to expensive construction in the way of concrete base to build on, if the power and loads to be hauled get much heavier.

I understand we have with us tonight Mr. Dean, superintendent of motive power of the C. S. & P. M. & O. R. R. at Sioux City, Iowa, and we would be very glad to hear from him if he will favor us with a few remarks.