Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/42

 positions in connection with them required for their efficient performance men who had received a business training, and were thoroughly acquainted with all the details of railway working. It thus became gradually the practice to promote men of talent and capacity from the lower ranks of the service, from one post to another, through the intervening grades, until they reached the highest positions attainable, and the present writer can recall, within his own personal experience, many cases in which men have risen from subordinate posts to become general managers of some of the most important railways in the kingdom.

Thus the humblest railway servant, if he does not, like one of Napoleon's corporals, carry a marshal's bâton in his knapsack, may at least contemplate a field of possible promotion of almost as wide a scope. It is scarcely necessary to say that engine-drivers are very carefully trained for their duties before being entrusted with the charge of a locomotive. They usually commence service as lads in the engine sheds, where they are employed as cleaners; after a time they are promoted to be firemen; then to be drivers of goods trains; next to be drivers of slow or local passenger trains, and, ultimately, the most experienced and intelligent men are selected to drive the express passenger, and mail trains.

The Company are very far from being unmindful of the material welfare of the men they employ, and indeed it is their constant study to maintain the most cordial and friendly relations with them, and to make them feel that their employers have a sincere interest in them and in their well-being at all times, apart from the mere buying and selling of their labour; in fact, they are