“What do you mean by that? What is the germ of the whole trouble?” “The fact that the officials cannot see things just as the men see them.” “Oh!” “No getting away from the fact that the laborer seldom looks at a thing as his superior looks at it,” Ralph pursued earnestly. “A rule promulgated by some officer of the road seems to him the simplest way of getting at a needed result. But after it is spread on the board at the roundhouse, for instance, it creates a riot.” “So it does. And I am hanged if I have been able to understand in some cases why the men go off half-cocked over some simple thing.” “Not simple at all to them. It is often a rule that lops off some cherished privilege. It may be something that looks as though it were aimed at the laborer’s independence.” “Bah!” ejaculated the general manager with more than a little disdain in his tone. “You see!” laughed Ralph. “You can’t see it in the same way that I can, for instance. You make an order, say, changing the style of the caps the men wear around the roundhouse and switch towers, and see what a row you’ll have on your hands. Some ‘lawyer’ among ’em will see a deliberate attempt for somebody to graft—or worse. Those caps they get for a quarter and can buy in the little stores that crop up around every railroad yard. The hogheads and firemen wear them. Everybody wears them. You order that the cap hereafter worn shall be quite different from the present cap, and you’ll start something that you’ll never be able to stop save by buckling down to the boys.” “But why?” demanded the official. “Tell me! What is the reason? Another cap might not cost them a penny more——” “Or might not cost them as much. That would make no difference. You strike at his independence in changing the style of the cap. And his independence is the most cherished possession of the railroader. You should know that.” “I know that they think they are independent,” growled the general manager. “But like the rest of us, they are just about as independent as the hog on the cake of ice.” The young train dispatcher laughed again. He could really appreciate the mental attitude of both the disgruntled railroad workers, at this time stirred up all over the country from ocean to ocean, and the higher officials of the road, who realized fully that unless all branches of the railroad pulled together during the next few months there would surely come financial wreckage to many systems. The Great Northern was really in better circumstances than many trunk lines at the time. But on the division the headquarters of which were here in Rockton, friction had developed. The shopmen talked strike; the yardmen were disgruntled; the section hands of the division talked more than they worked. Altogether the situation was so serious that the general manager himself found it necessary to look the field over.