Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/137

Rh the present day the Interstate Commerce Commission is the laboratory in which all these railroad questions are ground up, analyzed, classified, and finally sent out in legal packages for public consumption. With the idea of getting the “atmosphere” of this department, I quite recently called upon the secretary. He conducted me over the premises, introduced me to everybody, and was most kind and courteous in his attentions. He drew my attention to a dozen or more framed and illuminated testimonials, with which the walls of his office were pretty well covered. The tenor of these documents was all the same. Railroad men, telegraphers, organizations and brotherhoods of laboring men, from different sections of the country, unanimously testified to their gratitude to the secretary for his efforts and success in fighting their battles and winning their victories. In a word, he was their friend.

Remembering where I was, I thereupon looked about me for testimonials from railroad officials or corporations. I expected to see evidence of the secretary’s interest and work in behalf of the manager’s side of the problem, in relation, for instance, to the bringing of men and managements together in the interest of the public, for whose use and benefit, as I look at it, railroads are operated. But in this I was disappointed. My attention was then