For the rest, the interest and significance of this essay will be sadly misunderstood if the impression is in any way derived from it that the railroad employee is singled out and must stand alone as an object of adverse criticism. As a matter of fact, a volume can be written in our defense. Only too many of us can remember the time when a deserving employee could be, and frequently was, discharged on the flimsiest pretext. His breakfast disagreed with a yard-master or he happened to have domestic troubles on his mind: for less reason than this good men were sent packing. Not ten years ago the service on New England railroads swarmed with favorites and brothers-in-law. Faithful old employees were sent adrift without a moment’s warning or sympathy, to make room for youngsters with a “pull.” Many an honest old servitor, not so very long ago either, with justice and reason might have flung the retort of old Adam, in “As You Like It,” at his superior. “Is ‘old dog’ my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service.” But we have changed all that. Nevertheless, these things rankle. They say history repeats itself. Justice certainly does; and as for injustice it reacts and rebounds, and perhaps, after many days, it returns and demands a settlement at compound interest. The situation to-day between labor and capital is but a chapter in the natural history of the instinct of self-defense. Finally, in regard to the lack of loyalty to the world at large, the railroad employee is far from being the only offender. While it may be said to be strictly unintentional, this lack of loyalty covers our railroads as with a blanket. The illustrations given above have been chosen with strict impartiality, and regardless of the personality of the offenders. With the panorama of railroad life before us, as I have endeavored to sketch it, we railroad men should be able to contemplate the conditions, and our conduct in relation to them, as in a looking-glass. While the writer’s sincere desire from beginning to end has been to avoid giving unnecessary offense to any one, yet it should not be forgotten that to take away life, either needlessly or heedlessly, on a railroad is an offense against society that calls for the utmost rigor of treatment. V THE SQUARE DEAL In the days of the Roman Republic, when a consul was invested with supreme power, he received a caution or command somewhat as follows: “See to it that the Republic receives no injury.”