“You keep right on obeying orders,” he said.
The relations between a railroad president at the head of the organization, and some man who struggles ahead in the army of which the president is general, would make a whole book. They still tell a story in Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, of Mr. Cassatt, the Pennsylvania’s great president, and the brakeman.
It seems that one of the suburban locals that took Cassatt to his country home up the main line was halted one night by an unfriendly signal. The president, mildly wondering at the delay, found his way to the rear platform. On the lower step of that platform, in plain violation of the company’s rule, sat the rear brakeman. Cassatt was never a man who was quick with words, but he said in a low voice:
“Young man, isn’t there a rule on this road that a brakeman shall go a certain distance to the rear of a stalled train to protect it by danger signal?”
The brakeman spat upon the right-of-way and, without lifting his eyes from it, said:
“If there is, it’s none of your damn business.”
Cassatt—the man who could strike an arm of Pennsylvania into the heart of metropolitan New York at a cost of many millions of dollars—was much embarrassed.
“Oh, certainly it isn’t,” he said with an attempt at a smile. “I was merely asking for information.”
The next morning the president of the Pennsylvania summoned the trainmaster of that suburban division to his desk and reported the matter. The trainmaster turned three colors. It was lèse-majesté of the most heinous sort. He proposed the immediate dismissal of the offending brakeman. Cassatt ruled against that. He was too big a man to be seeking to rob any brakeman of his job.
“Just tell him,” he said to the trainmaster, with a suggestion of a smile about his lips, “that he cussed the president, and that, as a personal favor, I should like him to be more polite to passengers in the future.”