Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/92

74 impress upon learned and critical readers that individualism is in error and that loyalty is “willing and practical devotion to a cause that is outside of the individual and larger than he is.” It is quite another affair, and altogether more important, to reproduce our philosophy in terms of actual conduct and behavior. Not one railroad man in a thousand has either the time or the mental training to study theories, and from the teachings of professors to work out rules for his daily guidance; yet it is manifest that the most useful and wholesome ideas can be put to little practical utility in this railroad business until the employee is aroused, and some practical interpretation of them brought home to him with unmistakable sincerity and emphasis. While, therefore, it is unnecessary to supply railroad men with a definition of loyalty, it will be just as well to call attention to some of its most important features.

Loyalty then, as applied to the railroad service, means the safety of the traveling public so far as human safeguards can be depended upon. Again, comparing the service as it actually is with what it might be, loyalty means the elimination of numerous petty delays, and at times serious blockades, which, at the present day, on many railroads, are so annoying to the traveling public. This matter of delays to passenger trains is quite an important