Now, while it is a pleasure to bear witness to the steadfast loyalty, frequently under trying conditions, of numerous individual employees, it is nevertheless the duty of the unprejudiced investigator to call attention to the fact that the tendency of the forces that are at work in this railroad business at the present day, on the part both of the men and of the management, is simply and positively to eliminate loyalty as a useful and essential factor in the administration of affairs. While the public, the management, and the men are mixed up in the responsibility for this unsatisfactory condition, the blame for the lack of sympathetic coöperation, which is only another term for loyalty, that exists among us, must, to begin with, be laid at the door of the employee himself. This is by no means the hasty opinion of an individual thinker. Professor Royce, an eminent authority on the subject, in a lecture delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, describes the situation very emphatically in the following language:-- “The trades-unions demand and cultivate the loyalty of their members; but they emphasize the thesis that to be loyal to his union the laborer must disregard certain duties to the community at large and to the nation, duties which loyalty to loyalty seems obviously to require.” By loyalty to loyalty, Professor Royce means “the maximum of loyalty to the world.” But professors and students of industrial conditions are by no means unsupported in their conclusions. That labor leaders themselves are aware of the inherent weakness of our position may be inferred from the following extract from an editorial in “The International Railroad Employee” for November, 1907. “I may not lay claim to either the age or wisdom to advise my brother workers what to do, but if you will consider some of my suggestions relative to your actions and surroundings, and talk them over among yourselves, I am sure you will be able to find the world brighter for you. You seldom, if ever, give any serious thought to bettering your condition except by hoping for better wages. _Your ideals begin and end with wages_, and so long as that be true there is no possibility of your condition being bettered.” Surely this is a most uncomfortable and damaging confession. Interpreted in terms of railroad service, it should have the effect of causing the public to sit up and think it all over. With all our education and enlightenment, is it really a fact that the ideals and humanity of the American railroad man can be crammed into a nutshell in this way by honest and practical investigators, and labeled “wages”? At the present day the assertion that corporations are soulless has almost the nature and force of an axiom. It would now appear, according to the authorities just quoted, that the policy and ideals of labor, as represented by the American railroad man, are not only soulless but brainless as well.