Wooden Bridge for Passengers to Cross the Tracks. It must be quite apparent to the reader that the fundamental reasons for the great cost of English railroads also make possible their great earnings; at the bottom both are due to the thick population of a highly developed country. If they carry over one mile of railroad fourteen times as many passengers, and three or four times as much freight as our own railroads carry, it would be a pity if they could not earn five or six times as much money. Another reason for the greater earnings of the English railroads, although a minor one, is the higher freight rates which they charge, and how they manage to avoid the disastrous rate wars which devastate the treasuries of our own railroads will be shown later. The reader who has a turn for getting at ultimate causes will already have discovered that there existed, and still exist, in the two countries two entirely different sets of conditions, and that the whole method of building and working the railroads of the two countries has grown out of these conditions. Broadly speaking, we had here to create a country, and the Englishman had to serve one already created. We had to open the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, and push on to the stock ranges and wheat-fields of Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. The Englishmen had to carry coal, iron, wool, cotton, and finished products to and from the mines, factories, and markets, over routes the length of which can be expressed in hundreds of miles, while ours are expressed in thousands. We may now take up the organization of a British railroad, which the American finds peculiar in that there is no president or any vicepresident. The theoretical head of the system is the chairman of the board, and the board itself is divided into various committees on finance, permanent way, rolling-stock, fares, rates, traffic, etc. Each committee has its chairman, who is presumably a man of experience in the specialty of his committee. The directors are elected by the shareholders, and must themselves be share holders, and may hold no office of trust or profit under the company, and may not be interested in any contract with the company. The full board meets regularly once a month, as a rule, and the committees at like intervals. The directors, in full board and in committee, direct and control the policy and conduct of the railroad, not only in general but in detailthat is, theoretically they do. How far they do so actually depends largely on the knowledge, experience, and person Engine on the Caledonian Railway Drivers 8 feet 4 inches. Bridge Over Mansfield Turnpike at Daybrook Great Northern Railway. al force of the chairman of the board and the chairmen of committees. Their powers are ample, and the custom of the country justifies, and indeed encourages, their actual and constant control of the properties confided to their care. They are treated with deference by the officers of the working staff; and their frequent regular meetings and detailed committee work keep them familiar with all the affairs of their companies. Thus it happens that the chairman of the board is seldom a mere figure-head, and has often in English railroad history been a powerful and active man, devoting his whole time to the company which he serves. The chairmen of boards and committees usually get some small fees, but nothing comparable to what we should expect to pay to presidents and vice-presidents. The shareholders vote a sum, say £5,000 a year, to be divided among the directors, and usually, I believe, this goes to the chairman, deputy chairman, and chairmen of committees. Sometimes there is a specially salaried chairman, but not as a rule. But however able and zealous the directors and their chairmen may be, their duties in any one board are ordinarily but a small part of the interests of their lives, and their meetings, although frequent enough for effective supervision, are not frequent enough for actual administration. And so we come to the most important and characteristic of all English railroad officers, the general manager. He is the real head of the railroad, for he has no president or vicepresidents between him and the board. A Guard. He is typical, for he has almost always risen from a quite subordinate place, and embodies in himself the knowledge and traditions of years spent in the actual practice of a most arduous and complicated calling. As he has risen by fitness, through sharp competition, he is a selected specimen, physically and mentally. It is no uncommon thing to find on the great American railroads three, or even four, vice-presidents. One road that lately went into the hands of receivers had six. The president and vice presidents are all salaried officers, and are expected to give their whole time to the company and perform many of the duties which in England devolve upon the general manager. There he alone is responsible for the hourly conduct of the railroad from the top to the bottom; he sits with the board at general and committee meetings, and while he is subject to the board's orders he is often the guiding mind. But he could hardly have got to his place without a natural capacity for administration, and without having the nonsense polished off from him by hard contact with actualities; so you find him a simple, unaffected man, bearing his heavy load with serenity; but he has very little time indeed for study or recreation or the adornments of life. The working force of the English railroads is actually democratic in spirit and results. One would not suspect this from an examination of the list of officers and directors. He will find there the names of 36 dukes, marquises, earls, and viscounts; 35 lords of various degrees; 3 barons, and 109 baronets and knights, besides many officers of the army and navy, and a great many gentlemen whose social position permits them to put before their names the title Right Honorable or Honorable. Probably this large proportion of men of high social position serves a good purpose, which I shall indicate later; but the men who really work the railroads are mostly drawn from quite another plane. A man of the humblest origin entering the English railroad service may hope to rise to the highest place. Probably he would have no better chance to gain power and distinction on the railroads of the United States than on those of the United Kingdom, possibly not so good a one, and there is no other career in England that offers him so great an opportunity. Sir George Findlay, the late general manager of the London and North Western, said that "for the superior positions it is the invariable rule to select men from the lower ranks solely on the ground of merit, the best men being chosen irrespective of seniority or any other circumstance. Thus it is no unusual thing for a station-master to rise to the position of divisional superintendent, and even of general manager." From my own inquiries I judge that this is strictly true. Any ploughboy who takes service on an English railroad may reasonably hope to become general manager if he has the mental force to fill the duties of that very important place, and the physical strength to stand the years of hard work which must go before that rank, and the even harder work which accompanies it. The staff of the English railroads is mostly made up of men who entered the service as lads, say fourteen years old, and necessarily in very subordinate positions-about the stations as porters and telegraph boys, in the offices as messengers and subordinate clerks, or in the shops doing such humble work as a boy can do. These boys come largely from the farms. In fact, one old station-master told me that the ploughboys are the best material that he has. He himself having been a ploughboy, and his general superintendent having been another, perhaps he is a little prej udiced; but he said these boys are less inclined to drink and to be saucy than city-bred boys; they are healthier and more docile, and have sounder brains. VOL. XVI.-60 On the English railroads one rises from being a boy, that is, from being a "lamp lad," or a parcels lad," or a "goods van lad," or a "lad porter," to the grade of porter. Of the porter I probably said enough in the article published last month, although I spoke then only of this most useful functionary in the passenger service. He is found also in the "goods" department. The next step forward is to the grade of guard, who in England takes the place of the American conductor. The guard is found on the station platforms, where he looks at your ticket, opens and closes the door of the compartment, will try to see you well placed, according to your class, then hops into his van, and goes with the train on your journey. He is by no means the important person that the conductor is in the United States, for he has no opportunity to sit with the passengers, to talk politics, or horses, or railroads. He never rises to the rank of captain, as all conductors do in our Southern States. He may become a Knight Templar, for all I know, but I never saw him with his waistcoat ablaze with the symbols of that order which so often decorate our own conductors. Doubtless in private life he is a man of influence in his neighborhood, but on duty he is a quiet servant, and his relations with the public are purely those of business. He is a tidy man in blue cloth uniform with white metal buttons, and often wears a broad patent-leather strap over one shoulder with white buckle and ornaments. He sometimes carries a small bag, presumably for such papers as he needs to have, and is provided with a green flag to wave to the engineman as a signal to start the train. Altogether he is a simple, efficient, and civil official, and just here is a striking contrast between the men of the two countries. On the English railroads one never sees the conductor or ticketseller who scorns you if you ask a question, and gives the minimum of information with the maximum of brusqueness; and one never sees the usher who stands in the gateway and bellows in inarticulate pride, then turns a quid in his cheek, and squirts tobacco-juice into a corner. Doubtless there are sovereign Americans who will say that the good manners of the English railroad employees are servile, or spring from the hope of ultimate sixpences. While the first idea strikes one as somewhat crude, yet it is a matter of taste, and as such it is vain to discuss it. But it is quite impossible that a sufficiently large percentage of those who travel by rail in England can tip the guards to make any great impression on their manners as a class, and, indeed, it is doubtful if backsheesh and courtesy are correlative. I do not observe that in our country manners improve with the growth of the habit of tipping. It is quite true, however, that the guard is not above a shilling, and that much comfort may be cheaply bought with one "bob." The guard who is on his way to the chair of the general manager will probably go up through the grades of inspector and station-master. The inspectors are the choice men in the lower ranks. They are found in all the stations and yards, goods as well as passenger, and on their vigilance and fidelity hang the discipline of the staff and the good working condition of the material; and the best of them become station-masters. The station-master is a man of standing and dignity. He has passed successfully through the hard process of selection, and proved that he is a born commander, if not of divisions or army corps, at least of companies, and he may reasonably hope to die a superintendent of line or a goods manager, if not general manager. The chances are that he is a little pompous, more so than he will be when he gets to a higher grade. He is still a member of the uniformed staff, and wears silver ornaments and braid, and has a military air, which is sometimes tempered by the sacred high hat of England. Above the station-masters are the divisional superintendents, the superintendent of the line, the goods manager, and finally the general manager. Their functions and titles are so much like those of the officers of our own railroads that we need not stop to describe them, except to say that with us the traffic department occupies itself with getting traffic to carry, and the transportation department moves the traffic over the road; while in England the traffic department is the carrying branch, and therefore their goods manager and their traffic manager, if they have one, are what we should call transportation officers. It is well enough for the casual Yankee to learn some of the niceties of the English railroad language if he really cares to give accurate information to English railroad men. For example, when an English general manager offered me a pass, I told him that my transportation was provided for. That absurd locution would mean to an American railroad man that I had a pass or a ticket, or had been asked to take a seat in some officer's car; to the Englishman it suggested the idea that I was about to be sent in irons to a penal settlement, which seemed to amuse him. It is hardly worth while to follow the English staff out through all the collateral branches. In the freight service the personnel is much the same in origin and development as in the passenger service, but the mechanical staff is quite distinct. The boys here are recruited from a different stock; in the strictly mechanical departments they are the sons of firemen, engine-drivers, and shopmen, and other boys who naturally drift toward that kind of occupation, and they serve an arduous apprenticeship in the shops, rising gradually to be engine-drivers, but rarely, I should say, much beyond that; for nowadays the engineering departments of a railroad, both civil and mechanical, require a severe theoretical training that is to be got only in the technical schools or by apprenticeship in the offices of engineers. Therefore, in those departments the superior positions cannot well be filled from the ranks of the shop and line apprentices. In the civil engineering department, particularly, we find an almost distinct organization, and the chief engineer takes rank close to the general manager. Salaries and wages on the English railroads, at least in the lower ranks, would seem to us very low. For ex |