Considering the division of power, does this adjustment of responsibility appeal to any fair-minded person? It has occurred to some of us that if we or our organizations were assessed in hard cash in proportion to our responsibility for some of these preventable accidents, the casualty lists on our railroads would very quickly assume microscopic proportions. An “Employees’ Liability Act” would, of course, be looked upon as an absurdity; yet if unprejudiced judges were to analyze a few of our accidents, they would quickly conclude that the idea is sanely and soberly logical. They would simply consider the matter in the light of fair and square taxation with unmistakable and ample representation. It must not be forgotten that the manifestation of power by railroad labor is to be looked for not so much in the wording of schedules and agreements as in what the managements of railroads under pressure _feel constrained to refrain from doing_. The fairness and cogency of this argument may not “be as deep as a well” nor “as wide as a church door,” but I think, in the words of Mercutio, “’tis enough.” The questions and considerations that arise in this way in regard to the interests of the public, the management, and the men, are all comprehensively included and can be profitably discussed under the simple caption of loyalty,--on the one hand, loyalty of the men to their employers, and, on the other, loyalty of the employers to the men. No sincere well-wisher of the railroad employee will question the importance of the relation that exists, or that is supposed to exist, on American railroads, between labor and loyalty. Volumes have been written about loyalty in the abstract. For the most part politicians and teachers of national morality and patriotism have monopolized these arguments. The former would sink individualism in the interest of the machine, the latter for the good of their country. Granted the purity of their motives, the efforts of these people are entirely praiseworthy; and yet the significance and importance of loyalty in the industrial life of the nation can by no means be said to be included in the teachings of either politician or patriot. On American railroads, in particular, the question of the loyalty of employees to the corporations and to the interests of the public is vastly more important than a superficial glance at the subject would lead one to suppose. Understanding as we do the ever-increasing influence of the employee, the problem which we have now to consider relates to what at the present day he is doing with his power, and to what, with his ever-increasing importance, he intends to do with it in the time to come. The future holds in it the answer to these questions in terms of selfishness and abuse of power, or in terms of loyalty to himself, the corporations, and the public.