Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/600

580 to retire when they become old or inefficient from any cause; and, in the fifth place, it prevents old servants from falling into disgraceful dependence, or distressing destitution, which would be a public scandal, and would deter desirable persons from entering the service."

It is not always true, in the history of railroads or other corporations, that the one paying the highest wages is best served. The company that is most forward in caring for the general welfare of its employés, particularly in the matter of providing support for those disabled, aged, and of long service; that holds all its officials to a rigid responsibility for arbitrary or tyrannical exercise of power; that convinces its lowest servants that they will be protected against injustice, even at the hands of their highest official superiors—will soon obtain such prominence among the masses as will bring to its service the best material the market affords, though it give no more than—nor often quite so much as—others, who regard their employés only as so much material to be utilized or expended in the interests they serve.

The writer has for a considerable time studied the relationship existing between the managers and employés of many of our large corporations, and his observations seem to justify the conclusion that, whereas, in no other business employing large bodies of labor is there a wider field for cultivating cordiality and reciprocity of interests between owners and employés than in railroading, also in no other business (except, perhaps, mining) have such opportunities been more neglected. The admirable results he has observed following even a partial recognition of the equities between the executives and the rank and file of one or two railroads affords a glimpse of the great possibilities—easily made certainties by proper cultivation—of community of interests and aspirations between the two, that in unsettled times must prove invaluable.

It is unnecessary here to analyze the causes which produce the discontent and lack of unity between managers and employés, painful to observe, but too generally prevalent in this country, where the fascinations and the esprit de corps of railroading are so great as to give powerful support to any systematic and liberal efforts to reach a better understanding. One prominent origin of the lack of attachment to corporate interests here alluded to may be cited by way of parenthesis, namely, the system prevalent on most railways under which subordinate officials may discharge those under them without explanation or question. Where rigid accountability has been substituted for such irresponsibility the happiest results have uniformly followed, for thereby the lowest as well as the highest individual in the service became assured that, while he might be suspended for a short time by the exercise of arbitrary authority, a full hearing and exact justice would ultimately be had from an unprejudiced tribunal; while such supervision over those vested with limited authority naturally made