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26 so imperative that he was obliged to leave the railroad work. This work had been undertaken at St. Albans, Vermont, in 1854, and in Canada in 1855. The first really important step in this work was at Cleveland in 1872, when an employee of a railroad company, who had been a leader in every kind of dissipation, was converted. He immediately began to use his influence among his comrades, and such was the power of the Spirit that the Cleveland Association took up the work and began holding meetings especially for these men. In 1877, Mr. E. D. Ingersol was appointed by the international committee to superintend the work. There has been no rest for him in this. A leading railroad official says: "Ingersol is indeed a busy man. Night and day he travels. To-day a railroad president wants him here, to-morrow a manager summons him. He is going like a shuttle back and forth across the country, weaving the web of railroad associations." When he entered on the work there were but three railroad secretaries; now there are nearly seventy. There are now over sixty branches in operation; and the work is going on besides at twenty-five points; almost a hundred different places, therefore, where specific work is done for railroad men. They own seven buildings, valued at thirty-three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. The expense of maintaining these reading-rooms is over eighty thousand dollars, and more than two thirds of this is paid by the corporations themselves; most of the secretaries are on the regular pay-rolls of the companies. How can this be done? Simply because the officers see such a return from this expenditure in the morals and efficiency of their men that they have no doubt as to the propriety of the investment.

Mr. William Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes: "This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "Few things about railroad affairs afford more satisfactory returns than these reading-rooms." Mr. J. H. Devereux, of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railway, writes: "The association work has from the beginning (now ten years ago) been prosecuted at Cleveland satisfactorily and with good results. The conviction of the board of superintendents is that the influence of the room and the work in connection with it has been of great value to both the employer and the employed, and that the instrumentalities in question should not only be encouraged but further strengthened." Mr. John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, says: "A secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, for the service of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, was appointed in 1879, and I am gratified to be able to say that the officers under whose observation his efforts have been conducted informed me that this work has been fruitful of good results." Mr. Thomas Dickson, president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, writes: "This company takes an active interest in the prosperity of the association, and will cheerfully co-operate in all proper methods for the extension of its usefulness." Mr. H. B. Ledyard, general manager of the Michigan Central Railroad Company, writes: "I have taken a deep interest in the work of