To these questions the answer is that we have not as yet succeeded in breeding Napoleons very generally. We work with the clay that is within our hands. And our human clay works best at short range, and almost always the shorter the better. The president of a little railroad does not have to be a Napoleon to inspire confidence and affection and enthusiasm among his workers. Almost any real man will do, if the road is not too big. And he will merely need to know his men, to understand them, and to let them understand him. If this is true in the technical operation of a railroad it is even more true in another great phase of its management--its salesmanship. Long-range transportation salesmanship is to-day a real fundamental weakness of our American railroad. Let me illustrate. Here is its competitor in the form of a local truckman coming along and, if you please, not keeping within his proper economic bounds, but soliciting business up to a hundred-mile or a 150-mile haul. He probably is "Tom" to his fellow townsman, a personality, a real human being, and not a mere machine. A corporation is always at a handicap. And other things being equal, or even a little against him, he gets the business. In earlier chapters of this book I have set down what has seemed to be the real opportunity for the redemption of the branch-line and local services of our railroads, by the use either of small electric or of gasolene-motor units, but in all cases with such a frequency of headway as to render theirs a genuine service. Yet I would not give a fig for such a step if it could not be handled for the railroad by a competent executive right on the spot--no matter now how small his rank or title as long as he has real authority to go ahead or act. A canny minor executive of my acquaintance suggests that the average division superintendent should be given large traffic salesmanship authority. There are some things against such a plan, and many things in its favor.