The engineer—oil-can in hand—is
forever fussing at his machine
Railroad responsibility does not end
even with the track walker
The fireman has a hard job and a steady one
That did not satisfy the man who complained. He was of the sort that are supposed to have a “pull,” and he threatened to use his pull if the ticket-examiner were not discharged. He refused to accept apologies or explanations. He said he was hot. So was the superintendent. He keenly resented anything that approached interference with his discipline, and he refused to discharge his employee. Pressure was exerted, the pull was doing its fine work. The superintendent was—like every other railroad superintendent in this land—a fine diplomat. He took the man from the train gate in the terminal and gave him an equally good job in a city a hundred miles distant from Boston. He flattered himself that he had seen the last of the man with the pull.
Not a bit of it. That brisk soul chanced to pass through the distant town, and gasped at sight of the former ticket-examiner still drawing pay from the railroad. He hastened into the superintendent’s office in Boston and demanded that the subterfuge end—that the man be actually discharged from the road’s employ. The superintendent looked at him coolly, not speaking. The man again threatened his pull. The railroad boss looked at him through slitted eyes. It was a real crisis for him. His diplomatic smile was ready. He pointed with his lean forefinger toward the door.
“The case is closed. Good-morning,” was all he said.
After that he began wondering what road would have him after that pull was exerted. He wondered for a day, for a week, then a month. Then he forgot the occurrence. The pull, like many other sorts of threats, was thin air.
Of a different sort was the problem that confronted a superintendent in Chicago. On a certain suburban train for many years the conductor had remained with an unchanged run. Gossip had come into the super’s office that this conductor was systematically stealing from the company. The boss started a quiet investigation. The conductor with apparently no other income than his $3 a day, had purchased a neat home in the suburbs, had sent his boy to Yale, his girl to Vassar. That was Thrift, with a capital T. The superintendent took the case sharply in hand and summoned the conductor before him. He was one of the older sort, gray-haired, kind-faced.