Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/160

136 vironment tending towards sobriety, integrity, and industry, and rewarding them according to their efforts, in order to avoid the effects of this so-called “American tendency.”

That American methods of conducting business should be considered retrogressive, on account of lack or poverty of inspiration, certainly points to unhealthy conditions somewhere. If these American tendencies can be shown to have the effect of discouraging individual effort and the natural growth and ambition of the worker on railroads or elsewhere, the matter certainly calls for serious attention. To say the least of it, it betokens a very peculiar state of affairs, for the reason that if there be one characteristic that more than another distinguishes the American citizen from the rest of the world, it is his freedom of personal action, his propensity for striking new and unexplored trails in almost every branch of research, industry, and invention. The American is par excellence the world’s inventor. And yet, without the utmost liberty of thought and action, an inventor would cut but a sorry figure. It follows, therefore, that any curtailment of or interference with these distinctively American gifts and instincts will, as they say, bear watching.

Quite a number of years ago an American firm secured a contract for the erection of a large fac-