“No, the habit of careless unthrift is common to all men. It is not confined to the worker. It appears more frequently in him only because his necessities are more urgent and apparent, and, in this respect, he lives more in public. But extravagance is a part of the original savage man, the leaven which has survived all civilization. I have known lawyers, and doctors, and divines, and journalists who, with their families, might have been saved from embarrassment and suffering if there had been some power every month to seize a portion of their earnings or income and make a compulsory investment of it for their future benefit.” “But,” said the speaker, “to return to my subject. There is yet another advantage to be considered. If the United States operated, or even supervised, all the railroads, it would not be difficult—by requiring each railroad hand to report for drill and practice one day in each month—it would not be difficult to provide the nucleus and material for a great army, if such should ever again be necessary.” “Will the time ever come when armies can be dispensed with, Mr. Morning?” “I think it has come. I am about to have made some experiments with the new explosive ‘potentite,’ which, if successful, will, I think, demonstrate to the world that hereafter war will mean simply mutual annihilation, and that in conflict there will be small odds between the weakest and the most powerful of nations. But I wander into the domain of speculation, and you newspaper men require only facts.” “Do you propose any reform or changes in the present methods of railroad management, Mr. Morning?” “Several.” “For instance?” “There will be a uniform rate per mile for passage, all tickets will be transferable, no inducements will be offered to travelers to perpetrate falsehood and forgery, and freighters will not be required to expose their business secrets to the officers of the railroad company. “Do you know,” said Mr. Morning, “that a demand has actually been made upon me by the railroad companies for freight at regular express gold bullion rates on $2,500,000,000 worth of gold bars which they carried from Arizona to the East disguised as copper? For freight on the supposed copper I paid their regular rates of charges, amounting to about $200,000. They say that if I had shipped it as gold their charges would have been six and one-quarter millions, and they claim the difference.” “But you shipped it as copper at your own risk, did you not, Mr. Morning?” “Of course I shipped it as copper at my own risk, and on ten bars, worth really $400,000, which were lost from the ferryboat in transporting freight during the flood at Yuma, I collected from the company only their supposed copper value of $320, and I had no end of trouble and delay in making the collection. But they assert that in covering the gold bars with copper sheaths, I worked a ‘gold brick swindle’ on them, and they want the difference.”