Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/126

106 building of two thousand houses and the purchase of three thousand homesteads. The transactions of the loan section to June 30 represented six and three-quarter millions of dollars, when there was also a million and a quarter in the treasury, upon which the company’s guarantee of four per cent held good.

Rest-houses are another form through which welfare work in the direct interest of the employee is carried on as part of the regular operation of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The aim is to furnish a comfortable and convenient place, open at all hours, to the employee coming in from his run, whose first want is a bath, with plenty of hot water, and subsequently a restful bed. The work carried on by the Railroad Y. M. C. A. is of a similar nature. The old-time dark cabooses, dingy freight cars, and decrepit coaches, serving as night-holes into which to crawl for the sleeping hours till the time for the next run, are now nothing but an unpleasant memory. The Railroad Y. M. C. A., with its commodious lounging-rooms, bright and airy dining-rooms, clean lunch-counters, well-appointed kitchens, billiard rooms and bowling alleys, general assembly halls, libraries, attractive bedrooms and baths, is the practical exemplification to-day of the fitness of things. The disbursements of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for these purposes have in