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We must go one step farther, and create a feeling of permanence and loyalty in the railroad service.

This can be done, for it has been done in Europe. There the railroad employees feel that they have a permanent position, and an assurance of promotion. They feel that their interests are identified with those of the system on which they work. Of the two thousand strikes of the past decade in England, hardly a dozen were connected with railroad operation, and none of these were of grave importance. After a recent accident on the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway the employees held a meeting, and offered voluntarily to bear their share of the loss by contributing, in a body, a week's wages. This offer was not accepted by the directors, who said that the stockholders were better able to bear the loss than the employees; but it is significant as showing a state of feeling, on both sides, quite in contrast with that to which we are accustomed.

How can such a result be brought about? Not by any scheme of profit-sharing; such systems are usually too complicated either to be applied to the railroad organization or to be felt as a moral force by the men. It is better that the employee should receive his payment in the form of wages or salary, and that he should have an incentive to good work in the assurance of advancement when his work is worth it.

Two things are necessary to create this feeling. First, stability of position. There should be no removals except for cause, and the justice of this cause should be subject to the judgment of an impartial tribunal. Railroad officials are afraid of restricting their powers of dismissal in this way, but they do not realize the harm which they are often doing by their present system. A removal with real cause to-day often looks arbitrary, simply because the cause is kept secret; and the indirect effect of a few cases of this kind on the general feeling in the service is most disastrous. Secondly, the higher officials must be chosen with more reference to their capacity as leaders of men. The present system of selection in the business world lays too exclusive stress upon men's technical capacities. It selects the leaders of business with the mixture of qualities, good and bad, which fit a man for money-making. In the face of the present

difficulties we need more of those qualities which move men and not money, which secure to the leader the confidence and the loyal devotion of those who are under him. It may be that in these labor troubles we have the beginning of a reaction against the system which values a man according to his capacity as a money-making machine.

It is useless to deny that there are special difficulties in introducing this reform in America. Permanence of employment is less easy to give where the conditions of the railroads change so rapidly from day to day. A system like that of Germany, where the majority of the employees are often regarded as salaryreceivers rather than wage-receivers (though their average annual earnings are little more than half those of employees in this country), would be impossible here. The rapid reductions in rates which stimulate economy at every point greatly increase the difficulties of American managers in dealing with their employees. Any attempt on the part of a single corporation to insist upon high character among its men, and to pay them accordingly, may be thwarted by the necessity of reducing expenses to the level set by less responsible competitors, a difficulty from which most state railroads are free. The threat of enforced reductions by legislative authority still further complicates the trouble. Out of the gross receipts must be paid the wages of the employees and the profits of the company. If the wages are reduced the employees suffer directly; if the profits are reduced the investment of capital is diminished, and with it the opportunity for profitable employment of railroad men. The short-sighted attempt of some managers to save profits by reducing wages cannot always be defended; but whatever policy the managers adopt, the final result of forced reductions in rates must be more or less to the disadvantage of the employees.

Great as are these special difficulties, we need not regard them as insuperable. They must be met, unless our managers are prepared to accept state ownership of railroads as an alternative. For the public is not likely to allow the continuance of a system which involves from time to time absolute stoppage and paralysis of business. If our railroad managers can prevent this stoppage, well and good; if not, they must not expect to hold

their present position of leadership. It is not so much a question whether the change would be an improvement as whether we should be able to resist the demand for such a change.

For the United States there is the strongest reason for believing that such a result would be undesirable. We know how public business is habitually mismanaged; and there is no instance even among the foreign countries with the best civil service, of state railroad systems conducted on the American standard of efficiency. But a large section of the public, more or less misled as to the evidence, believes in state railroad ownership, and desires to see it introduced into the United States. As long as this is merely a vague popular demand there is little to fear from it. The conservative forces of industrial society are strong enough to resist it. But if the leaders under the present system confess their inability to meet a vital public necessity, that confession will give overwhelming force to the demand for a change. Those of us who distrust the present tendencies toward state socialism must see to it that our system of industrial selection under private enterprise shall do the work which modern social organization requires.

For this purpose it must bring to the front not merely leaders of dollars but leaders of men. Thus and only thus can the corporations fulfill their responsibilities to the public, and at the same time retain the rights which they at present hold. This is a lesson to be learned from the railroad strikes.

ARTHUR T. HADLEY,

29

THE HASTE TO BE RICH.

WATER is refreshing to a thirsty throat, whether it be drunk

from a wooden bucket or from a golden vase.

The vessel counts nothing in the refreshing. Why will men confound human happiness with the condition that happens to circumstance it? Is not happiness the thing that men wish, and does it make any difference whether it come in a palace or a cottage? “Yes, a mighty difference," cries my neighbor; "give me my happiness in a palace, and you may have yours in a cottage." And half the world echoes my neighbor's dictum. Neither my neighbor nor half the world know that they are uttering a very stupid fallacy. They are confounding the shell and the kernel. They are supposing that happiness with a palace covering is a different thing from happiness with a cottage covering. They have yet to learn that happiness is happiness wherever found; that it is a spiritual state, and worth just as much in one place as in another. "Ah! but happiness is conditioned on outward circumstances," my neighbor and half the world cry, "and the palace is exactly the thing that brings it." Now, neighbor, you think you have me nonplused, but stop. I grant you that a spiritual state, such as happiness is, is influenced by outward circumstances, but it is not conditioned by them. The mind is too free for such a bondage. The mental state does not flow from the outward circumstances, although it may receive impressions from them. Happiness is contentment with surroundings, not the creature of surroundings. Its root is in the mind, not without. So all that my neighbor and half the world, who began by differentiating palace happiness from cottage happiness, and then stepped down to making the palace rather than the cottage the creator of happiness, now can say is, that contentment has a better soil to flourish in when in a palace than when in a cottage. They have to grant that cottage happiness is as good as palace happiness, and

that in each case there is contentment with surroundings; but they affirm that this contentment is better nurtured in a palace, and is more stable there. But are kings and dukes the happiest of men? History seems rather to make their woes conspicuous. Responsibilities produce risks. The higher you mount, a slip brings the greater fall. Moreover, where cares multiply anxieties intrude. We must not ignore all this because we see the prince pass by with a crown on his head and a retinue at his heels. It is an ignorant proletariat that looks up to royalty, and fails to see the human soul with its weakness under the velvet robes.

Now, what we have said of palaces and royalty is applicable. to the possession of pecuniary wealth. The power that wealth gives is not a power to be happy, but a power to obtain certain articles which are supposed to contribute to happiness. To a certain extent it is true that these do so contribute; but it is equally true that very many of them delude the purchaser, and minister only to his care and sorrow. The splendid establishment, grand houses in city and country, troops of attendants, rich banquets, gay equipage, princely yachts, are very dazzling as a sight to the poor, but they who have these things soon. tire of them. There is no permanent ministry of pleasure in them, because the soul's content must have a more solid and spiritual foundation than material wealth can purchase. So far as wealth preserves from the distressing circumstances of poverty it may be said to minister to happiness, for it then removes a provocation to discontent; and, moreover, so far as wealth. enables a grand soul to help the unfortunate or advance the higher interests of mankind, it may be said to minister to happiness; but these are the only two conditions of such a ministry. In the first one all who have riches can participate, but in the second it is only the grand soul that can enjoy the result, and that grand soul would have been happy without the wealth. How different is the truth of this analysis from the common idea that wealth has in itself a magic power to make a man happy!

Now, when we look at the other side of the picture and see how many circumstances calculated to produce unhappiness wealth introduces, we have to discount largely the little benefit

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