Aside from the great majority of the people, whose interests are indirectly but surely affected by any juggling with railroad properties and principles, is a great army of men who obtain their livelihood and that of their families by work on or for railroads. An army? Yes; more men than ever were seen in the largest army in the world. All of them are “effectives,” too--none of them can be found among “the sick, lame and lazy.” Chauncey M. Depew, President of the New York Central road, says truly: “With those who are actually in the service, and those who contribute by supplies, one-tenth of the working force of the United States are in the railroad service; and that tenth includes the most energetic men and most intelligent among the workers of this magnificent country. There are ten million working men in this country, and six hundred thousand are _directly_ employed in the railway service. With their families they constitute a larger population than the largest of the States.”
Mr. Depew further says, with equal truth: “There is no democracy like the railway system of this land. Men are not taken out of rich men’s parlors and placed in positions of responsibility. Men are not taken because they are sons of such, and put into paying places in the railway systems; but the superintendents all over the country, the men who officer and man the passenger, the freight, and motive power and accounting departments, all of them come up from the bottom. Are you going to stop this thing? No! There are no men being born or to be born who are to be by inheritance the superintendents, treasurers, comptrollers, auditors, the freight and ticket agents, the conductors, the yard masters, who are to be the master mechanics, the foremen of the shops, of the future. They are not born. They have got to be made and come from the bottom up. And in every one of these departments to-day, in every railroad in the United States, in the humblest positions, earning the smallest salaries, are men, who within the next twenty-five years, are to fill all these places by promotion. Don’t tell me there is no chance to rise in this country.”
When this army grumbles, as once in a while it does, there is good cause for alarm; not that they, like the disaffected of other armies, may do damage to life and property, but because their troubles are almost always traceable to stock-juggling rascalities, from which the men have no hope of redress. Some of the companies allow no business operations to interfere with the rights of their employees. Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt is probably the most extensive owner of railway stock in the world, but he finds time to see his own employees frequently, and has even built and furnished a handsome club-room for them. He has also been active in assisting the Young Men’s Christian Association in establishing reading rooms at railway centres. President Charles Francis Adams, of the Union Pacific Company, found time not long ago to publish, in a magazine article, the outline of a system for retaining and encouraging competent employees. President Roberts, of the great Pennsylvania road, is as proud of his men as any general ever was of his army.