“In regard to discipline, I don’t believe in being too severe. It’s what you hold up your sleeve and have the power to use periodically, that counts. Yet we are severe enough on the Chicago & Alton. No merit or demerit marks for us. For minor offenses, from five to ten days’ lay-off, with loss of pay. For neglecting to have your watch inspected, we give as many as fifteen days’ lay-off; and once in a great while, the penalty for serious offenses goes up to thirty days. But discipline to any great extent is uncalled for. When a man has been through my car, he may need it once, but very seldom a second time. If you will compare the number of preventable accidents on the Chicago & Alton during the years 1897, 1898, and 1899 with any year or period since I took charge of this system in 1900, you will get a very good idea of what the ‘Stereopticon Car’ and all that it stands for has done for the Chicago & Alton Railroad.” But now, making an end in this way of our survey of conditions on American railroads, there is yet one topic of another nature that should prove unusually interesting to the general public. To the writer of this book it has always seemed strange that the public interest and anxiety in regard to these distressing railroad accidents should never yet have taken the form of a very natural curiosity to find out to what extent and by whom these matters have been systematically studied and thought out. Doubtless the public has the impression that its interests are being cared for somehow by somebody. But impressions of this kind must not be mistaken for evidence. What, for instance, are the names of the employees, the managers, the politicians, or the legislators who have studied these railroad accidents at close range and given the public the benefit of their investigations? If these authorities have given little time and no thought to the subject, the public should be informed why they have avoided the discussion. As a matter of fact, the investigation has been avoided, practically by all hands, for the reason that no man can honestly apply any kind of a probe to a serious railroad accident without running the risk of a clash with the labor organizations. No such neglect, for this or other reasons, of a great public issue can be pointed to in any other department of American industry or civilization. For instance, from time to time we read in the public prints of prizes being offered by cities and states, and sometimes by the national government, for the best designs for some public building or memorial. Without delay architects and artists all over the country concentrate their minds on the subject. Those who are capable of submitting valuable opinions and plans are invited and encouraged to do so. Money and brains and professional pride are enlisted in the undertaking, and thus we actually secure the best results that the concentrated thought and talent of the profession is capable of producing.