these not systematically enforced, high-speed trains closely following one another without adequate safeguards, dereliction of duty on the part of certain employes, as well as a general weakness of discipline, have been denounced and condemned." But it would appear from recent developments that there is "a nigger in the woodpile" that none of these criticisms has taken property into account-the influence of the railroad employes themselves in the situation. "They claim," say press reports, "that the public safety must receive, not first, but only secondary consideration. The men flatly declare that the managers entrusted with the running of the road must accept the selection of their union in promoting men to positions of great responsibility, that the matter of fitness is none of the managers' business; that the rule of seniority must be slavishly adhered to, even if engineers, guilty of playing with human life by running past red signals, have to be placed at the throttle of the fastest and most important passenger trains on the whole system."

Mr. C. L. Bardo, the new General Manager of the company, testified before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Stamford case: “When I came with the property the forces were in many respects disorganized. The train service was bad, and things generally were out of gear. I went to the Lodge rooms of the Engineers along with the Vice President. We talked over all of the things that we had in mind, we importuned them to exercise every care to make the operation of the railroad safe, and discussed all the phases of operation that we could think of. We met them in Harlem River and we met them in Providence. We met conductors and trainmen in New Haven. I had discussed it with the General Committee of both the conductors and the trainmen. I have told them it was a question of safe operation every time I have seen them. I discussed it with the engineers. A week ago last Sunday I called our Division Superintendents, and we spent the entire day in discussing this question of safety, and getting the men impressed with the fact that the question of train operation was a serious one, and that we wanted and must have, as a first consideration, the question of safety. On the following Monday, I had a conference with the General Committee of Engineers. at the Committee's request, to take up a number of grievances, and we discussed practically that whole afternoon the question of safety, in an effort to find, if we could, what had crept into our engineers, and some of the forces employed on trains; what was contributing to this. Up until the last year and a half the service of this railroad, from the standpoint of safety, I think, could be favorably compared with any railroad in the United States and I was at a loss to understand it. We have on this road today, I would say, ninety per cent, probably ninety-five per cent, of the men employed in our train and engine service are just as good men as you will find on any railroad in this country. and I think they feel, just as keenly as I do, the reproach upon the organization and upon the service of this railroad, brought about by this last Doherty affair. * * *

"I do not believe that the organization, as a general proposition, have intended to enforce by the powers at their command, rules which necessarily tend to break down the safety of the service; but they have been edging in, inch by inch, and on one side they have been encouraged a good many times by this milk-and-water investigation that we get. On the other side, the public has come in, so that in a majority of cases, and I think it is true of the New England railroads today, they have not much left but their corporate identity. The General Manager of a railroad should have power to say what is right and wrong, and he should have the power to enforce what he says. He cannot have the power if the organization is going to point the pistol at him every time that he attempts to do something which he knows, from his own best judgment, is the right thing to do. It is time that the public understands that this question of railroad safety is one in which they are vitally interested, and if they are going to influence, if they are going to swerve, if they are going

to have their minds inflamed and distorted by the newspaper articles which have been published in connection with this investigation, if they are going to believe that kind of stuff, then they must expect, if that is the standard of fitness they have set up, they are not going to get what they are paying for."

Since the Stamford accident, the Company has made certain new regulations, one of them with reference to the rating of engineers. To some of these the men have shown a disposition to object and have issued many statements to the press respecting their position. Governor Foss, of Massachusetts, hearing that a strike was contemplated by engineers and firemen, is said to have written to the officers of the unions warning them against such a course, and threatening to call an extra session of the legislature to prohibit the strike if it should be called. He gave as his reason that the alleged insistence of the unions on promotion being governed by seniority would lower efficiency of service; and that the interests of the public must be considered in the matter as well as that of the railroad and its employes. Officers of the union said the question of whether they would strike or not was for the members to decide. Further comment seems unnecessary. If the public permits its ideas to be molded by the sensational press reports and as a result gives moral support to organized labor in its unreasonable demands by stepping in with unintelligent investigation and laws, it ought not to complain of the consequences. In the case of railroad travel, if it prefers to ride behind engineers chosen in conformity to such a "union" rule rather than behind the best men the officers of the company can obtain, it has no one to blame but itself for the accidents that the incompetents cause.

"We will win the strike" (that now on of the Colorado miners) "if it takes ten years!" Frank J. Hayes, Vice President of the United Mine Workers of America, is quoted as having declared. "We have the money necessary to do it with and can get more." Poor down-trodden, povertystricken toilers! They have just spent more than $600,000 in the effort to unionize the Paint and Cabin Creek districts of West Virginia, and now they are prepared to finance a ten-year strike of from ten to twenty thousand of the miners of the west. We rather suspect that the mine owners out there would like to be as opulent. We know we wish we were.

As another way of disposing of some of the toilers' wealth to advantage, Organized Labor, the paper representing the building trades councils of California, proposes that the unions purchase "tracts of land, to be systematically occupied and cultivated by union men and their families during industrial disturbances or throughout periods of depression." This might be a good scheme. At least it would prevent their hanging around their former places of employment while on strike, and the rioting and destroying of property and beating up of men hired to take their places.

"Because you are a member of one of the largest unions in the city," says The Union Leader, "is no reason that you are better than the man who is a member of one of the smallest unions. Often the percentage of true blue union men is greater in the smaller unions."

Is this why the smaller unions are small?

The President of the American Federation of Labor is still being lauded. in the labor press for having declined the alleged bribe of $40,000 testified to by "Colonel" Mulhall. One would infer that honesty is somewhat rare among labor leaders from the furor this instance seems to have created.

The business man's life is not a happy one, in the cartoonist's opinion, with oft-recurring strikes, political interference and regulation. rumours of war, etc.

Herald. New York