Cutting down expenses has been done in an unintelligent, cold-blooded sort of a way. We go home at night feeling good at having cut down our payrolls. We should be feeling sorry at the necessity for taking from men the wherewithal to pay the unceasing rent and grocery bills. Our methods give some room for the populists' plea to put the man above the dollar. No, I do not expect ever to see an entire correction of these conditions. In the play of economic forces the weak have to suffer. I believe, though, that through minimizing such suffering we can improve the service and earn bigger dividends for our stockholders. Each of us can do a little; all of us together can do a great deal toward making the problems easier. As the French say, noblesse oblige--rank imposes obligation--every time. It is up to us, the educated, powerful class, to take the lead and to do the most. We cannot expect the poor, unlettered man to work out his own salvation unaided. We cannot turn him loose to face an unequal struggle. If he fails, if he has too much time for brooding, society at large has an anarchist and we are the losers. Do not understand me as advocating the employment or retention of unnecessary men. What I am kicking for is a better balanced system. When we lay off our extra sectionman in the fall, do we give him a pass and ask him to come to town and work when we put on more unskilled winter labor in the shops and roundhouses? No, he is in a different department. An official or a foreman might be put to the inconvenience of waiting a few days, of breaking in a new man. Next spring there might have to be a readjustment when the work trains go on. Some big, strong railroad men are coming to the front who will improve these conditions by working from a broader viewpoint. We need more brainy men with nerve enough to stand up and insist upon a consideration of the welfare of our properties ten, twenty or fifty years hence. Because we need them they will be developed.
Now do not hand me the old song and dance about business being cold-blooded and devoid of sentiment. We spend money directly and indirectly for advertising with a view to fostering public sentiment in favor of our line. Business comes from an increase in population, from development of resources, from the growing sentiments of the human race. Life owes its origin to love, which originates in sentiment. The family, directly traceable to sentiment, is the unit of civilization. The way to have our heads rule our hearts is not to forget that we have hearts.
