Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/254

242 their various vocations; but it is a well-known fact that in many railroads only one or two men in a road-gang know how to tamp a tie so that it will not require resetting the same season; and extensive lines are known to the author that do not possess a foreman—perhaps not a supervisor—who can adjust a curve with instruments. In these extensive enterprises the efficiency of the unit the individual workman becomes an item of grave economic consideration; for if it be true that the value of the individual's work (whatever it be) is increased through greater intelligence and special training, though it be only by a few cents per day, the total is of no inconsiderable moment, when his services continue through a series of years, and when, instead of one workman, thousands are employed. If even a slight deficiency in the skill and intelligence of one workman makes a few cents' or a few dollars' difference in the cost of the products of each week's labor; if the incompetency of one foreman or one manager lacking scientific training does usually—as so positively stated by competent authorities—net an appreciable loss; multiply the result to corporations like, for instance, our Eastern trunk-lines (one of which employs at least fifty thousand people on that part of its system east of the Ohio River, and more than half as many more west of it); realize that in such extensive organizations few if any of the practical details of the operating departments can be accurately gauged by those whose interests are most vitally concerned; comprehend how many important matters, involving grave consequences in their execution, must be intrusted to superintendents, master-mechanics, and foremen; then obtain a correct measure of their education and general knowledge (to say nothing of their scientific attainments), and we shall begin to appreciate the importance and bearing of this question of technological education, and the enormous losses the lack of it yearly entails upon investors in railway securities.

In railway service there is frequent necessity for sending to a distance, and beyond supervision, one or more thoroughly competent men, who shall not be simply mechanics, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but who shall be able to turn their attention to work coming under their notice, whether they have before done that thing or not. At present such men are rarely found enrolled in the rank and file of railway mechanical departments; yet it is testified by many manufacturers who have afforded their operatives the advantages of technological instruction, that they have no difficulty in filling such positions with boys of twenty or twenty-one years of age, whom they send long distances and place in their hands work with which they have had little or no previous acquaintance, and by their intelligence they not only give the greatest satisfaction, but frequently develop into competent teachers of others.

The reason for the educational deficiencies of railway operatives is apparent when we consider how few opportunities they have for