Then he explained. Harry might and probably would develop into a good fireman, like President W----. Eventually he would probably have a fine passenger run and get as much money perhaps as his division superintendent, probably more than his trainmaster or his road foreman of engines. But that would end it. He would be a working man, albeit a well-paid working man, but nothing else--never an officer. The new caste in our railroading would hold him tightly down. Far better that he should pocket his pride as a graduate of a pretty good Eastern university and become an office-boy in some railroad office and study all the phases of the business at every opportunity that presented itself. There was chance there of his getting ahead in railroading, perhaps to the very head of it. The taint or stigma of unionism would not be upon his shoulder to draw him down in the estimation of the big men who won and control our carriers. That was frank talk, but accurate. At last we _have_ achieved an industrial caste. The barrier is there. The railroads suffer from it greatly, but the men who to-day control them are not going to remove it. Here and there across the face of the land you will find a few minute exceptions, a trainmaster here, a master mechanic there, perhaps all the way across the land as many as ten or a dozen superintendents who have risen from the brotherhoods. But in our big national organization these few are as nothing. The barrier is being well maintained. And as long as our railroads are owned and operated as at present, it is likely to stay put. Granted then that this great wall is to be kept, and assuming that the railroads can tide over their present personal deficiencies, how can this distressing situation be avoided in the future? Easily enough. It comes down in final analysis to a wage question. Our railroads can and should establish courses in the various phases of their business in many of the large colleges and training-schools across the land; they should have methods of systematically scanning the output of these schools and of securing for themselves at least their fair share of it for proper training toward executive possibilities. Other industries in America long since have shown the possibilities of such methods. Yet even such a program will fail if the salary inducement is not made both fair and attractive. I spoke but a moment ago of the lack of curvature, the tendency toward right-angledness of the salary line between the top class of railroad personnel and the bottom. It too has arisen in other businesses, and they have had to solve it. Here is one case in particular.