Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/166

 enough to make convenient even money. Do not think you are saving money if you avoid raising the pay of your officials when you raise that of employes.

Wrecks are a reflection of administration. Sometimes cause and effect are years apart, so distant, in fact, as to be almost unrecognizable. Adversity makes heroes and the more disorganized we find conditions the more comprehensive and earnest should be our efforts to seek the cure. Neither public opinion nor our own self-respect will stand for shifting too much of the blame to our predecessors. Whatever safety appliances we adopt we shall never be able to eliminate entirely the element of human judgment, we shall never get beyond trusting somebody. Therefore we must train our men to alertness. We must build up a loyalty that pervades every rank. Those roads have the fewest wrecks due to defective equipment which cater to the welfare of their men. Such roads do not expect a man to live on air. When repair work is slack they put their men to building cars and engines, taking advantage of the low price of material. If we have to operate so closely that we cannot make such