The engineer did not look up, but said:
“We carry forty-six over the division.”
“I didn’t think that forty-six was due for two hours yet,” said the railroad officer.
“She is not,” answered the engineer, “but I’ve been down here an hour and a half already fussing with this baby to have her in shape. You may notice that she belongs to the Order of the Red Spot.”
Then that particular man came to know about the Red Spots. All the way back to Jersey City he kept looking for Red Spots, and every time he saw one, he saw an engine slick and clean, as if she had just come from the shops. That set him to thinking; and after he was done thinking, Parsons was promoted in service, and the Order of the Red Spot was established for the system. There has been an exalted division made of that order recently. When a man can be assigned to one engine and he brings her into the Red-Spot class and keeps her there, the railroad dedicates that engine to him for the rest of his lifetime upon the system. His name, in gilt letters, goes upon the cab-panel of the engine, whereas in other days you used to see those of statesmen and of railroad-owners; and there it stays until the engine goes to the scrap-heap. The other day the first of these engines, drawing a Waldwick local, pulled into the Jersey City passenger terminal; on its cab was “Harvey Springstead” so large and clear that you could read it across the yard; in the cab-window was Harvey Springstead, prouder for that moment than any earthly prince or potentate.
Sometimes the competitive idea is the best to foster to accomplish results from the men, and to bind them and the road a bit closer together. We have seen how a fortnight of “T. B. M. F.” repairs to a locomotive has been quickened down under contest to 13 hours and 34 minutes. Many of the more successful railroads began some years ago to institute annual contests between their section-bosses. The section-boss who kept his stretch of the right-of-way in cleanest, trimmest shape for a twelvemonth got a black and gold sign at his hand-car house, so big that folk who rode in the fast expresses could read the honor that it conferred upon him. Sometimes he gets more—a trip pass for his wife and himself to some distant point, or even a cash prize. Annually the superintendent of maintenance may run a special train, with a specially devised observation grandstand at its rear or pushed ahead of the engine. On that grandstand sit all the section bosses and other track maintenance experts. They see the other fellow’s sections—and their own; and some time on that trip there is a little dinner and the awarding of the prizes.
Do not even dare to think that these things count for little upon the railroad. They are mighty factors in the maintenance of one of its very greatest factors, the human one.