Incidentally it may be stated that in past years the average railroad executive was himself the largest single force toward the propagation of trade-unionism within his industry. While decrying its steady growth he placed a premium upon its advantages. Let me explain. A few years ago, say ten or fifteen, at the most, there were but four important unions of railroad employees--the four great brotherhoods of train workers: engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen. These were and still are high-grade organizations, extremely independent, refusing for many years even to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. The men who conducted them were high-grade men of great principle and considerable vision. They fought for the rights of their fellows and fought well, with the result that there were few times when train employees were not adequately paid. At that time the rest of railroad labor, with the very few exceptions, had no national organization; its individual loyalty was given instead to the properties for which it worked. With what result? Here is one glowing instance. Conductors, then and now, belonged almost without exception to their strong trade organization, the Brotherhood of Railroad Conductors. It took good care of its own. A conductor on a fairly good run might easily earn from $175 to $200 a month, even in those prosaic days of butter at twenty-five cents a pound. It was a good pay, yet one could hardly say that the average conductor was overpaid. For he was far more than a mere train employee, particularly if he had a passenger run. He was a great point of personal contact between a railroad and its patrons. Upon his tact and diplomacy and understanding, or lack of these qualities, his road might rise or fall. True at all times, this was intensified in hotly competitive territory. A good conductor might easily bring or hold patrons for his road, a poor one drive them away to the other line. Yet I think you will agree with me that at least an equal point of contact between the railroad and its patron is the man with whom he comes in contact before he boards the train--the station-agent. _His_ tact and diplomacy and understanding have a good deal to do with attracting patronage to the road. Yet it was not more than a decade ago that I found in a certain small brisk Eastern city of some twenty-five thousand people the chief representative of an important railroad working seven days a week, twelve or fourteen hours a day, and paid $85 a month. He knew what the conductors who ran the trains past his station were receiving and it rankled.