He swung quickly to his own case. He was on his run, across three States from Spokane, Washington, to Paradise, Montana, seven days a week, 365 days out of the year. For this he was pulling down $150 a month--$120 for his straight time and the other $30 as overtime. Around him in Spokane carpenters were getting $1.25 an hour and plumbers $1.50--and working five and one half days a week or, at the most six. They all owned cars, and Saturday afternoons and Sundays they went fishing. The brakeman had not been fishing in more than two years. He told me so and I believed him. If you interview enough men in the course of a twelvemonth you will come quite quickly to know the kind that you can believe. It is written in their faces. "Seven days a week and with two gardens, one at each end of the run; and I make out--nothing more," he continued. "Last night my wife and I went down to the market and we bought pork-chops. There were six of them--none too many for the three mouths to be fed at home--and the measly things cost me sixty cents, at the rate of forty-five cents a pound. We allow ourselves meat three times a week, not oftener." Somehow even though it might have the fervent approval of some of our really high-brow hygienists, I do not like that idea of an American workingman being able to have meat but three times a week. It doesn't seem quite American. It doesn't seem quite fair. I do not believe that the average executive, or even the average stockholder of the American railroad, wants such a condition. He assuredly would not want it for any member of his household, or for himself. If he did want such a condition, I should like then to contrast his attitude with a British one that came to me not long ago. "We of Great Britain feel that every British workman is entitled first to a minimum wage that will insure him decent conditions of living--housing, food, clothing, education for his children, insurance against death and old age--and to a maximum wage that will include these things plus a little share in the profits of the railway business. Otherwise we can never be sure of the coming generation. And a decent coming generation is our one national assurance of continued national strength and security."