Naturally, a few little talks like this, face to face with the men themselves, soon began to put new life into the rank and file. Mr. Norcross's old pet name of "Hell-and-repeat" had followed him down from Oregon, as it was bound to, but now it began to be used in the sense that most railroad men use the phrase, "The Old Man," in speaking of a big boss that they like.
This winning of the service esprit de corps—if that's the word—commenced to show results right away. The first time Mr. Norcross's special went over the line anybody could see with half an eye that the pay-roll men were taking a brace. Trains were running on better time, there was less slamming and more civility, and at one place we actually found a section foreman going along and picking up the spikes and bolts and fish-plates that the wasters ahead of him had strewn all along the right-of-way.
There was so much crowded into these first few weeks that I've forgotten half of it. The work we did, pulling and hauling things into shape, was a fright, and my end of the job got so big that the boss had to give me help. Following out his own policy, he let me pick my man, and after I'd had a little talk with Mr. Van Britt, I picked May, the young fellow who had been so disgusted with his job under Van Burgh. Frederic of Pittsburgh was all right; a little too tonguey, perhaps, but a worker from away back, and that was what we were looking for.
Out of this frantic hustle to get things started and moving right, anybody could have pulled a couple of conclusions that stuck up higher than any of the rest. The boss and Mr. Van Britt were steadily winning the rank and file over to something like loyalty on the one hand, and on the other, wherever we went, we found the people who were paying the freight a solid unit against us, hating us like blazes and entirely unwilling to believe that any good thing could come out of the Nazareth of the Pioneer Short Line.
This hatred manifested itself in a million different ways, and all of them saw-toothed. On that first trip over the line I heard a Lesterburg banker tell the boss, flat-footed, that the country at large would never believe that any measure of reform undertaken by the Dunton management would be accepted as sincere.
"You talk like an honest man, Mr. Norcross," he said, and he was saying it right in the boss's own private car, too, mind you, "but this region has suffered too long and too bitterly under Wall Street methods to be won over now by a little shoulder-patting in the way of better train schedules and things of that sort. You'll have to dig a good bit deeper, and that you won't be allowed to do."
The boss just smiled at this, and offered the banker man a cigar—which he took.
"When the time comes, Mr. Bigelow, I'm going to show you that I can dig as deep as the next fellow. Where shall I begin?"
The banker laughed. "If you had a spade with a handle a mile long you might begin on the Red Tower people," he suggested. "But, of course, you can't do that: your New York people won't let you. There is the real nib of the thing, Mr. Norcross. What we need is a railroad line that will stick to its own proper business—the carrying of freight and passengers. What we have is a gigantic holding corporation which fathers every extortionate side-issue that can pay it a royalty!"
"Excuse me," said the boss, still as pleasant as a basket of chips, "that may be what you have had in the past; we won't try to go behind the returns. But it is not what you have now. From this time on, the Short Line proposes to be just what you said it should be—a carrier corporation, pure and simple."