Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/130

 be the fault of that somebody or the system. This feeling was not unnatural, since the detection came through a discredited channel, the spotter. Rare are the circumstances where secret service should be necessary. There is something inherently wrong in any system which has to gain routine information by indirect methods. The detective should not be necessary for checking the good and the bad alike, but only for following up those who become manifestly bad or notoriously corrupt. The most efficient system is that where open checking and inspection are so thorough that temptation is diminished by the ever-present thought of prompt and sure detection. This desirable condition cannot obtain where the system makes such important officers as the superintendent and the trainmaster unconscious attorneys for the defense, sometimes openly advocating reinstatement of a thief. On the contrary, from its impersonal nature, a corporation must be so administered as to gain the moral effect of every available force for right, to secure the help, however small, of every person connected with the administration. Views of composite efficiency must converge at a point sufficiently near to be of practical