Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/803

Rh The library exerts an elevating and educating influence on the employés of the service, and particularly upon their children, the value of which can only be estimated by those acquainted with the dearth of school facilities, and the ignorance prevailing in the mountain-regions of Maryland and Virginia, and generally throughout West Virginia.

The effect of the savings and building features in inculcating and encouraging prudence and thrift will be readily recognized by us all, who know by experience that there is more need to learn the art of saving money than of earning it. By their means the humblest laborer can provide against seasons of adversity, or if he pleases may provide a home for himself and family and take that rank and independence among his fellows that attach everywhere to freehold and freedom from debt; and all this, under circumstances of convenience, cheapness, and absolute security that none but—and not many of—our metropolitan cities can offer. As illustrating the avidity with which the employés of the Baltimore and Ohio Company are utilizing these new features, it is reported that the savings fund had received in deposits $273,132.59, of which $159,440.88 have been loaned under its building feature, and only 26 per cent of deposits have been withdrawn since the bank was opened.

The benefits accruing to the Baltimore and Ohio Company through the formation of this association were early demonstrated to be material and important. Though at first there was opposition from some employés caused by a misapprehension of its provision, and unjust, harsh, and ignorant criticism from newspapers inimical to the Baltimore and Ohio management, the end of its first year showed a membership excelled by few if any benevolent societies in the United States, and at the end of its fourth fiscal year ninety-five per cent of all the company's employés—other than clerks, telegraphers, and agents, non-hazardously employed—were enrolled.

While before its establishment the Baltimore and Ohio, like all other railroads similarly situated, directly or indirectly, yearly disbursed large sums for damages to its employés, and was subjected to much annoyance and loss by the angry feelings engendered by litigations with its people and their friends, since 1880 it has not had a dozen such suits, and this almost total immunity from vexatious litigation with its employés has of itself been a saving of several times the entire expenditure on the association's behalf.

Through the system of medical examination of applicants, through the improved sanitary condition of its shops, through the consideration and care and compensation paid employés when disablement necessitates cessation from labor, and through the prompt payment of sufficiently large death insurance, the standard of the service has been perceptibly raised, and it is securing a much more efficient and desirable class of labor, skilled and unskilled, and has, in some places, drawn the best material from competitive works, and holds its force with