Our trouble seems to be, not with civil service as an abstract proposition, but with the type we have been getting. It is about Z-99 as compared with the real thing. It has too many flat wheels to run smoothly. It must be jacked up high enough for new trucks and a stronger kingbolt. True civil service presupposes maximum care in original selection. It doesn't mean that we shall wait until the grain and the coal begin to move before we figure on more crews. It rather contemplates having available firemen in wipers, and willing brakemen in clerks. Every superintendent believes that he is the best judge of men on the pike. On every system are probably men who can give him cards and spades, picked coal and treated water, and then outclass him on such a run. If we leave the hiring to the different trainmasters, master mechanics, or agents, we may have mostly the Irish on one division, mostly the Dutch on another. If we are going into this civil service business and are taking men, like Federal judges, for life or during good behavior, let's have a long list of waiting eligibles recruited for each division. Let's send around periodically a car with an examining board from central headquarters to size up the talent recommended by local officials. Put experienced officials, a surgeon and an oculist on the committee. Show your trainmaster that men who make it a business have more time than he to keep dudes and cigarette smokers off the runboard and the payroll; that the former have broader opportunities than he to develop a high standard of requirements. Let the committee encourage men already employed to demonstrate their fitness for transfer to other departments or to heavier divisions. Let's change ends with our rail and put it where it will do the most good. The employment bureau, the recruiting office, or the civil service commission becomes a necessity to every large organization. Some roads have made a start in this direction, but it is only a start. To work out the problem will cost us money. Yes, but less than we are being forced to pay by some of the labor contracts we have had to sign. It is not only more graceful, it is less expensive, this leading instead of being driven.