Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/102

 country has gone outside its own ranks for official talent. The oldest roads have had only a few Leonard Woods and Fred Funtons, a president here, a vice-president there. Other roads have changed officials so fast that one is reminded of the traveler sojourning in Paris during the French Revolution. He instructed his servant to tell him every morning what the weather was, that he might know how to dress himself, and what the government was, that he might know how to conduct himself. What then of our boasted civil service; of the wonderful administrative machines we build up and find wanting? Is the principle wrong or is its application faulty? The earnest efforts of able men, crowned by many partial successes, are sufficient guarantee of honesty of purpose, of the necessity for something of the sort that has been attempted. He who criticises, be he ever so honest, must suggest a practical remedy or he soon descends from the level of the critic to that of the demagogue or the common scold.

Our trouble seems to be, not with civil service as an abstract proposition, but with the type we have been getting. It is about Z-99 as compared with the real thing. It has