For example, a man makes a serious mistake, without actual injury to persons or damage to property. He is punished to the extent of ten demerit marks. In the course of a few months five or six other men commit the same mistake. In every instance a secret record of the mistake has been kept. When a mistake remains unchecked, sooner or later it arrives at the epidemic stage and reaches its climax in a wreck, and then finally a man is discharged for it. The demerit marks have had no corrective or preventive effect whatever. Under this system the trouble is allowed to evolve in a natural way, from a simple case of unchecked negligence into a disaster in which, perhaps, a community is called upon to suffer. On the other hand, a system that takes publicity and the pocketbook for its principal factors enlists every corrective element in its favor. You cannot separate suspension and loss of pay from publicity, to a certain degree. In all systems of punishment or correction, in a police court or elsewhere, there are usually two or three elements that are depended upon to bring about beneficial results. These factors are the shame that is attached to the publication of names, the pecuniary loss in the shape of a fine, and the danger of imprisonment. The Brown system has abolished publicity and done away with pecuniary loss. The employee is now aware that no one can touch his pocketbook, no one can wound his pride, or hold him up as an example to his fellows. Of course it is too bad that a railroad man should be called upon to take his discipline home with him, that his wife and children should have to share the shame and the penalty; and yet the decisions of courts and of human tribunals everywhere are all subject to the same criticism. The Brown system, in a modified form, is to-day the American method; and while its supposed primary object may be to increase efficiency, its actual working is all in the interests of harmony between the men and management. The proof of the efficiency of any system of discipline is to be found in the freedom from accidents of all sorts. Within the last few months, I have heard railroad managers who heartily approve of the Brown system, deplore in the same breath the alarming increase of accidents. One of these gentlemen went so far as to inform me that it is the only possible system, so long as the men and the political influence of the organizations are allowed to control the situation.