Their number according to statistics, runs up into the hundreds of millions of passengers annually. Our ten thousand in the performance of their duties, listen to their interchange of opinions; note everything that is worth knowing; glean opportunities, and absorb information and wisdom.
If you have noticed any of these ten thousand off duty and on his way home, you can not have failed to see gentlemen.
These men are really the operators of our “Overground Railroad” in the highest sense of management. They are not mechanical, they are observing and possess the power of mental acquisitiveness, due to their surroundings and their contact with the passengers. They are the opposites of the patrons and passengers, and managers of the old “Underground Railroad,” which is switched off into the sidetrack of forgetfulness.
The Pullman man from New York City meets his brother Pullman employee from San Francisco, let us say, at St. Louis. Their regular stunt is about two thousand miles each, with the care of numbers of the passengers coming from tens of thousands of miles apart, from all over the globe, in fact.
What is the result of this meeting? To an outsider it is something like this:
“How are you, Sam?”
“How are you, Bill?”
“Have a New York stogie.”
“Have a San Francisco cheroot.”
That is all the outsider sees or learns. But when these men get away and apart, they exchange notes of everything that they have learned on the trip or has transpired on their routes. They are message bearers of everything they have learned new from their passengers.