The Uvalde Asphalt Company started a paving company to use up their products, and, as I was getting very tired of the mines, and also seemed to have reached the maximum salary that the Company would pay for my position, I applied for a job on the paving end, where I should have a pleasanter life and possibly a chance of promotion, besides learning another side of the work. The head office, however, told me that they needed me where I was, and therefore could not transfer me; and then put a green man into the position I had asked for, paying him $125 per month, while I was only getting $75! I wrote to a number of different paving companies, and the asphalt trust offered me a place as yard foreman in Los Angeles at three dollars per day, provided the Uvalde Company would give me a good letter of recommendation. The Uvalde Company then made me some vague promises as to the future, but I refused to stay, and finally they gave me a really very good letter. So on the 26th October 1902 I left Cline, Texas (where I had worked seven years and seven months) for California. My people thought me foolish in leaving a company where I was known, and had made some small record, and in which I also held a good share, to go to another concern where I was unknown and had no friends. This may apply to England, where long service is appreciated, but it does not apply to America. Here a new man has as good or really a better show than one long in the firm’s employ; in fact, when I arrived in Los Angeles, I found that I was to supersede a man who had been sixteen years in the Barber Company, and who was acting yard foreman till my arrival.