The distressed president of the system sent East for a superintendent who had a reputation. He thought he had his man. The new broom was a book-of-rules man. He had a quarter of his operating force laid off all the time, to go before him. He was a man fond of words, and he lectured those old fellows as if they had been school children. He might have done quite as well with his division if he had been operating it from Kamchatka. The men began to call their rule-books the “Joe Millers.”
The superintendent got mad and was lost—hopelessly. He began discharging right and left, and the wrath of the gods and of the brotherhoods (the great labor unions of the railroads), was upon him. The road was threatened with a big strike at the very time that it could least afford it. He avoided that strike only by acceding to the demand of the brotherhood chiefs that the superintendent’s head be given to them on a silver platter. After that the “Man Without a Country” was in a more enviable position. There was not a railroad in the country that dared employ him, despite his excellent technical training. He drifted up into Canada, got a job running a state-operated line. He held that job less than a year. He was murdered of a winter’s night in a shadowy railroad yard, shot down by a discharged train hand.
The grim situation on the “booze division” grew much worse. The president of that system gave the matter his keen personal attention; he began scouring the entire width of the land for material, without much success. When he was thoroughly discouraged, a raw-boned trainmaster from a far corner of the demoralized division applied for the job of superintendent; he reckoned he could handle the situation. He had caught the president unawares standing outside of his private car. The president told him that he was superintendent.
“There was something in Matt’s eye that took me,” he confessed afterwards. “You do see something in a man’s eye now and then that beats a whole barrel of references.”
So Matt Jones (that is nothing like his real name), took up the nastiest operating proposition in the country. He did not lecture nor discharge, not he; but the men knew that there was a boss behind the super’s desk. The fellows who began trifling with the new broom were down in his office the next morning. Jones selected the leading spirit; he had the advantage of knowing him.
“Pete,” he said in a quiet way, “you’ve been drinking. It doesn’t go. I’m not going to discharge you,”—he gave grim thought to the fate of his predecessor—“but in thirty days you are going to send in your resignation voluntarily and leave our service.”
The man protested. He had not been drinking; and Matt Jones had better not try that game anyway. The superintendent wished him a pleasant good-morning and bowed him out of the office.
In five days the engineer was back, uncalled. The superintendent saw him, even though he had no more to say than he had not been drinking; that is, he had quit drinking long ago. In ten days he was back again. This time he admitted that he had been drinking up to the day that Matt Jones took office. The superintendent said nothing. He bowed the engineer out again. A month is a short thing at the best. At the end of the twenty-second day, the engineer again found his way to the superintendent’s office. He seemed like a man who had been through a sickness. Big human that he was, he began crying at the sight of the man who was a real boss.
“For God’s sake, Matt, don’t forget the old days up on the branch. I can’t get out from the old road,” he said.
“I gave you thirty days’ chance to get on another road,” was all the satisfaction that he got.