The first thing that strikes any one on arrival is the hurry and rush. Everybody seems to be going somewhere in a terrible hurry, but after you have been there a few months you find yourself getting into the same habit. My first position—_i.e._, appointment as distinguished from job—I got through a friend, a Mr. Bole, of New York, who gave me a letter to the Chicago Great Western Railway, where I secured a post in the claims department of that road. Here I worked two months, and drew the large salary for a beginner of $50 per month. Then there came a change of management, and out I went along with hundreds of others. Here, let me remark, lies one of the curses of American business methods. A new head of a department, new manager, or new president in any corporation, generally means a change of men all the way down the line, as all of them have men of their own to fill the places. So that generally a superintendent, manager, or president has a set of men that follow him around from place to place. These are his henchmen, and he sees that they get places where he is. They are, of course, efficient, and men he can trust, and whom, therefore, he wants near him; but what of the poor devils that are ousted? Of course none of this applied to my case, as I got my position through pull (recommendation), though I had to hold it down myself, and naturally went as soon as my pull went. But I have known many cases where there was much hardship and wrong done. I know a man who worked twenty-six years for one railroad corporation, working his way up from brakeman to divisional superintendent, which position he held during the four years I knew him; a harder worker and a finer man I never knew. A new president was elected from another railroad, and this man and five other divisional superintendents were forced to resign in the first three weeks of the new reign, to make way for men off the railroad from which the new president had come.