when carried over to the field of education of the employee. The railroad is largely controlling the destinies of its employees by the opportunities for learning and perfecting themselves for higher grades of service which it controls. Education of some sort is being constantly dispensed. That it shall be dispensed equitably to each according to his capacity and assiduity and that the environment thrown around the employee shall be as favorable as is consistent with the good business management of the property is not an unreasonable proposition.

The extent and kind of moral responsibility is a nicer question, in that it depends so largely on local conditions. In some places the conditions of the service are such that the employee. has no other resource than the railroad for which he works. Then, too, how far the moral idea enters any relations of the railroads to its employees depends on the general standard that may prevail in the community. The moral element has its value in promoting the healthy loyal sentiment and largest efficiency among the men. So much of railroad economy is based on the efficiency and highest development of the individual that any element in this efficiency can not be ignored.

The railroad already has in a very large degree the plant for education. It has the scholars assembled and can command their attention in a way that no other agency can. It has its scholars classified and ready for efficient educational work. Aside from the great outlay in mere material, plant of shop, office, and track, where things may be learned, it has the actual practical working spirit to instill into the learner the notion of discipline, promptitude, accuracy, and practical Therefore for all these reasons it can educate men at the least added cost. As explained by Mr. George R. Parker at the Northwestern Railway Club in January, 1897, Railroad officials can do a great deal to assist the educator, because all fields of operation are under their control."

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Who shall bear the expense of education is still a question that is settled in all manner of ways. After the common-school system there is little that is generally accepted as the basis of educational support. The higher education was first a matter of private beneficence, and then it became little by little absorbed by the State. Where the education has gone farther, on the one hand has been the claim that it should be merely the training of the man for general responsibilities of citizenship and on the other hand that it should be the specific training of the man to earn his living, and so should teach trades, etc. Again, this responsibility for special education is held to be a function of the State, but the support is levied on that particular trade which it is designed to supply.

Regarding the method to be followed by a railroad in special education, the first and simplest plan is merely to register and classify entrants upon the service and in a rude way lay out their courses of advancement. The next stage is to put each man on individual record, then to appoint some one to have general oversight of the learners, to watch their record, and to have power to change a first general plan of movement according to the special fitness of the individual. Such a man is the" foreman of apprentices" recommended by the Master Mechanics' Association. He would be the man whom the employee would consult in any outside instruction he might undertake. Next would come the progressive examination, and then the examination for full promotion, which would sift and rearrange the men, tending further to facilitate the selective process of education. Then follow libraries, clubs, lecture courses, and finally evening instruction, leading up to the development of the full technological institution.

But the conversion of a railroad into a technological institution, while it might offer a rich field for the enthusiastic educator, would hardly serve the purposes of practical railroad operation, except so far as it distinctly did not interfere with regular work.

PUBLIC ASPECTS OF EDUCATION OF RAILWAY MEN.

It is well known that there is no single organized industry that compares for a moment with the railroads for the number of men employed, the amount of wealth involved, the conditions of life and general prosperity affected. Into the great body of nearly 1,000,000 employees are absorbed every year not less than 75,000 young men. Some drift into it, some enter it under spell of the romance, some few enter it definitely as a life career to which their fitness and their inclinations point.

The potency of intelligence and trained efficiency throughout so compact a body, to affect national life and prosperity, can not well be overestimated. It is at least a matter of remark that the qualifications for this service have until very recent years been nowhere specifically recognized in education.

Mr. Charles Francis Adams, ex-president of the Union Pacific, says: "I am as little able to see why education and the higher standards which it introduces should not be as useful in the railroad profession as it is in law or medicine."

In an industry whose effects ramify to every part of our commercial and industrial prosperity, the highest talent and most intelligent administration should be engaged as in our national finances. Intelligent, broad principles are necessary to enable the management to deal with the highly complex problems presented. Producing centers must be protected in their markets. There must not be too little transportation nor must there be too much for the healthy employment of national energy and resources.

The railroad is peculiarly situated in its relation to social questions, beginning with its own employees and extending indirectly to a wide range. It can not be doubted that it is within the resources of intelligence to create conditions that would have made impossible the great Chicago strike. That the higher principles of sociology are coming to the fore in railway management as mere business expediency is attested by the increased attention to employees' relief associations, insurance, superannuation, and disability funds, and the disposition to canvass carefully and in the light of the best principles the whole question of associations among employees.

The influence of railroad men for general intelligence in a community is very great. In the larger cities they are absorbed into the great body of the population, but along the line of road the employee wields a very great influence. At every small town the station agent, with the editor, the doctor, the minister, the lawyer, is the respected influential man of the place. In business he stands for the promptitude, precision, and infallibility of the great corporation which he represents. Even the section hand in the remoter communities becomes a channel through which the ideas of the larger world percolate. The passenger-train service on side lines and in local service has an influence unknown to those who have always traveled by trunk lines. Not a little of the ideas of cleanliness, neatness, and public health in some communities may be traced to the conditions of the coaches that run in that territory. Referring to what existed in his day and is still common in the more sparsely settled communities, President Depew said: "The passenger conductor was the great man in the village where he lived; he was the great man at the terminal where his train went out every morning and came back every night. He could do things that nobody else could do."

All the considerations adduced to show the influence and possibilities of so large a body of men take on new emphasis in light of the fact that they are so highly organized a body, responding so completely to single causes. From the educator's standpoint they are very much of a unit. Their conditions of service, their qualifications of skill and intelligence are practically the same all over the country.

The influence of corporate employ on this great body of men held together in a close, semimilitary organization plays no inconsiderable part in the formation of the national character. Mr. Depew, of the New York Central Railroad, says that railway organization is essentially military. And further, in referring to the effect on the individual: "In the service everyone's eye is on everyone else. There is a generous appreciation of comradeship, at the same time there is a severe criticism of conduct and character of fellow-employees and officers." A writer has said that the tendency of such employ is to produce an abstract sense of duty which no civil avocation has before afforded to such an extent. It trains to habits of promptitude, precision, and responsibility. A considerable part of the service has semipublic functions, which are exercised without any force of civil authority. In the training and management of this large body of men the State has not interfered to any extent. It has been chary of setting a fixed legal standard for the fitness for different grades of service, even though the safety of the public is vitally concerned. In several States laws have been in force prescribing certain physical qualifications of employees in train service, and again as to hours of labor and the standard complement of men, so far as these conditions affect the safety of the service. But for the most part the railroads have been left to themselves in prescribing the qualifications of their employees and the conditions of safe operation. When accidents occur, the courts determine the negligence from the standard of general railway practice which the railroads themselves have set up. The stationary engineer must have a license from the State to run his little engine; but the locomotive engineer who carries the lives and property of 200 passengers in his hand, the dispatcher who fixes the meeting point, the operator who receives the train order, the signalman who gives the right of track, and the inspector who is responsible for the safe condition of the bridge, have never had their qualifications passed upon by the State.

The principle of State regulation of the qualification of employees is not congenial to the spirit of railway men. The employees look with distrust on such regulations. A proposition made to the grand chief of the Locomotive Brotherhood in October, 1898, fixing a standard of fitness that required one year's experience as fireman, examination in practical mechanics, knowledge of and competency to run a locomotive, and leaving to the discretion of the examining board what is a skilled mechanic, and what shall be "reckless and intemperate habits" to disqualify an applicant, was unfavorably received. The Locomotive Engineer's Monthly, commenting on it said, “We do not believe any license law of any kind can be passed which entirely excludes political factors from the board of examiners."

From the public standpoint there is possible an enormous economic waste in the misdirection of energy and intelligence during their best years of so many young men as every year enter the ranks of the railway service. It is of the highest importance that they be carefully selected and trained with reference to an ultimate fitness, so that there may unfold to each a useful and happy career. It is also of public importance that the general influence of so many in so compact a service be for intelligence, law, and order.

The training of railway men up to a high standard of efficiency has another public significance. Not only does the economical transportation of a country cheapen the cost of production of its exports, and so far give it advantage in the world's markets, but itself constitutes an industry which may look for return in a foreign market. A high type of railway service becomes the pattern for railroads in new countries. Wherever the standards of American railway practice prevail, they carry with them a demand for men trained in American methods, but more especially for the rolling stock, material, and supplies that, together with the service, make that practice distinctive. The standards and practice of

Great Britian are one thing, and of Germany another. According as each prevails the railway manufactures of that country find a market. Mr. H. S. Haines former president of the American Railway Association, has specially emphasized this in several addresses: "If we wait until 50 miles are built from one African seaport and 20 from another into the heart of that continent, all under the British system, we may say farewell for employment thereafter for any American men in those regions, or for the sale of railway appliances of American make.”

The place of education in practical railroading is coming to be very fully realized in the last few years. It marks a great transition. Writing in the Railroad Gazette of December, 1887, Gen. James Harrison Wilson says: "After an experience of nearly twenty years in building and managing railroads and studying the economic questions connected therewith, my deliberate conclusion is that the greatest need of the American railroad system at present is technical education for officers and employees of every grade, especially for presidents, managers, traffic managers, and superintendents."

Dr. Chauncey M. Depew, formerly president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "In these days of thorough training it is almost impossible for a young man of ordinary education to get on in competition with the graduates of Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, the scientific schools of Columbia, the special education of Cornell, the big advantages of the Troy Polytechnic and the Stevens Institute, and the instruction given in many other of the schools and colleges of the United States."

Says a former master mechanic, emphasizing the necessity of education in place of the former indifferent apprenticeship in the shop: "How many shopmen are competent to give accurate reasons for the doing of things; or if competent, care to take the trouble? How many regard their information as their own stock in trade? Some men are too narrow because they have always worked in one shop. Perhaps they are narrow because they have stayed on one road or in one section, or in one country."

The former unreasoning prejudice toward the educated man is rapidly disappearing. Says Mr. H. G. Prout, editor of the Railroad Gazette: "Probably all of us realize that in railroading the day of the educated man has come; the day of the uneducated man is passing."

Mr. L. Bartlett, master mechanic of the Missouri Pacific, writes: "The railroad business of the United States has become a science, and the better educated employees become the more successful in the work performed on our railroads. Of course we must have our 'hewers of wood and drawers of water.' The ranks of this corps can be casily filled, but the workmen in the machinery department, the men in charge of trains, should be men of education and judgment.”

The idea has taken most firm hold of the practical men. In an index of the proceedings of the Master Mechanics' Association that comes to the year 1890 the word "apprentice" does not once appear. In the last three annual meetings the education of the apprentice has been made the subject of one of the most important reports of that body. So important has the matter been considered that the committee on apprentices has been made a standing committee to report from year to year. In their report for 1897 they say: "Your committee wishes to say that it considers this general subject as important as any which the Master Mechanics' Association can discuss and in which there is a work to be done ready to hand which is worthy of the greatest pains and best thought of the association." The Roadmasters' Association of America took up the same subject in 1890. The relation between the institution of higher education and practical life is more intimate and mutually helpful than ever before. Several of the men who are teachers in our special engineering schools have come out of practical railroad life to accept the chair of the college. There is more conference between

the university and the shop. The mechanical tests made at the shop are the basis of lively discussion at the railway club. The testing plants of the Master Car Builders' Association have just been permanently installed in the laboratories of Purdue University.

Most of the educational activity affecting railway practice has so far been on the technical side, which has evolved a set of distinctively American standards, fitted to the conditions of American operation. There is a feeling, on the other hand, that the economic and sociological sides of railway education have been neglected, to the disadvantage of the railroads and the public, resulting in the growth of theories that are held to be uncongenial to American conditions. Mr. H. G. Prout, editor of the Railway Gazette, voices this sentiment in his remarks at the New York Railway Club in January, 1897:

But the teaching of railroad sociology in the colleges to-day is as often bad as good; perhaps oftener. The young men who lecture on this topic are ordinarily men who have taken a post-graduate course in the German universities or who have been deeply affected by the writings of the German sociologists. They come to their work in American colleges strongly affected by State socialism. They come with an exaggerated notion of what can be accomplished by State control of railroads. They come to work with almost no actual knowledge of American railroads and American railroad men. They proceed, therefore, to project from within themselves a set of railroad officers and a set of railroad conditions as they conceive these officers and conditions to exist, and then undertake to improve them on German principles. The result is a rapid growth in our country of the pernicious notion of extending the powers and duties of Government into industrial enterprises; the rapid growth of the theory that railroad officers are all corrupt and self-seeking and are public enemies just as far as they dare to be.

Mr. Walter G. Berg, principal assistant engineer of the Lehigh Valley Railway, advocating a professional railway course of instruction, says: "A European element should be strictly avoided, and knowledge of the actual working and status of the conditions existing on American railroads should be absolutely requisite.” ANSWERS BY A NUMBER OF RAILROADS TO INQUIRIES REGARDING THE MEANS OF EDUCATION OF THEIR EMPLOYEES.

The following questions were addressed to some of the representative roads. Below are given the answers received.

MECHANICAL DEPARTMENT.

1. Is it the policy of the road to educate its own men or to depend on outside supply?

2. If the apprenticeship is contemplated as a general policy of the road, does the road bear any part of the expense of coincident instruction by night classes, etc.?

3. Is there one general supervision of apprentices or is their selection, their instruction, and their distribution among the regular employees left to the discretion and individual convenience of the division officer and not made to accord to any general plan?

4. Is the "time" basis rigidly enforced in your apprenticeship or does the "merit" basis prevail? (By the latter is meant a system that allows credit for special work, outside study, or unusual aptitude, and so far shortens the course to the apprentices.)

5. Is there any implied contract or employment at the expiration of the apprenticeship?

6. Upon the completion of an apprenticeship does the road give certificates or does it recognize similar credentials from other roads?

7. Do you have more than one grade of apprenticeship, beginning with different