Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/181

Rh public opinion, says to an offending employee, “Your sin has enlightened and purified you, go back to your job.” This is the mental method of discipline. A man is called upon to think, without at the same time being called upon to feel.

On a railroad nowadays, when a “green” man makes a mistake, he is quietly informed by his superintendent that five or ten demerit marks have been placed against his name on the record book. The shock he receives on the commission of his first mistake is not very striking. He has perhaps been called upon to think, but in order to give his thoughts pungency and direction, he should also have been called upon to feel. Good habits are induced by feeling plus thought much more surely and expeditiously than by thought alone. Feeling plus thought is the scientific route. Some day, perhaps, thought alone will prove sufficient, but a railroad is no place to experiment with Utopian possibilities. What is necessary is the best and quickest way to originate good habits. The whole nervous system in man is first organized by habit. The feeling plus thought method of discipline is humane as well as scientific, and is the most potent instigator and prompter of habit.

According to Webster, discipline is “subjection to severe and systematic training.” In the American method of discipline on railroads, there is no