Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/57

 in three-hundred-year-old Virginia. Triples that are O. K. in cavalier South Carolina may be too quick acting in puritan Massachusetts. Commercialism, like patriotism, rests on certain fundamental principles. The application of these principles may be as uniform as a train of system cars; it may be as diverse as the cars in a train of a connecting line. Orthodoxy is usually my doxy.

The rough and ready efficiency of the West, which has developed a vast domain, has won the praise of the world. Our rough and ready brethren are finding that, as society rapidly becomes more highly organized, this old-time efficiency must be supplemented with technical education. So you find your self-made magnate giving his sons college educations. The only regrettable part is that to make it easy the old man raises the low joints for the boys and they do not always get bumpings enough to test their equipment thoroughly. Time will correct this, and more college men, more presidents’ sons, will fire, will switch, will brake, will become men behind cars as well as men behind desks. It is not only what you know, but what you make people believe you know, that counts