The general manager stared at the young fellow after his last remark for fully a minute before asking:
“What do you mean by that? What is the germ of the whole trouble?”
“The fact that the officials cannot see things just as the men see them.”
“Oh!”
“No getting away from the fact that the laborer seldom looks at a thing as his superior looks at it,” Ralph pursued earnestly. “A rule promulgated by some officer of the road seems to him the simplest way of getting at a needed result. But after it is spread on the board at the roundhouse, for instance, it creates a riot.”
“So it does. And I am hanged if I have been able to understand in some cases why the men go off half-cocked over some simple thing.”
“Not simple at all to them. It is often a rule that lops off some cherished privilege. It may be something that looks as though it were aimed at the laborer’s independence.”
“Bah!” ejaculated the general manager with more than a little disdain in his tone.
“You see!” laughed Ralph. “You can’t see it in the same way that I can, for instance. You make an order, say, changing the style of the caps the men wear around the roundhouse and switch towers, and see what a row you’ll have on your hands. Some ‘lawyer’ among ’em will see a deliberate attempt for somebody to graft—or worse. Those caps they get for a quarter and can buy in the little stores that crop up around every railroad yard. The hogheads and firemen wear them. Everybody wears them. You order that the cap hereafter worn shall be quite different from the present cap, and you’ll start something that you’ll never be able to stop save by buckling down to the boys.”
“But why?” demanded the official. “Tell me! What is the reason? Another cap might not cost them a penny more——”