So far as the wage-earner is concerned, it is, therefore, this portion of the force of a railroad company which may be called distinctively "the service." If good relations exist between the men employed in its operating department and the company no serious trouble can ever arise in the operation of the road. The clerks in the financial department, or the engineers in the construction department, might leave the company's employ in a body, and their places could soon be filled. In point of fact, they never do leave it; but should they do so, the public would experience no inconvenience. The inconvenience--and it would be very considerable--would be confined to the office of the company, and their work would fall into arrears. It is not so with the operating department. So far as the community at large is concerned, whatever difficulties arise in the working of railroads develop themselves here. All serious railroad strikes take place among those engaged in the shops, on the track, or in handling trains. That these difficulties should be reduced to a minimum is therefore a necessity. They can be reduced to a minimum only when the railroad service is thoroughly organized. How then can this service be better organized than it is? It is usually maintained that only the ordinary relation of employer and employed should exist between the railroad company and the men engaged in operating its road. If the farmer is dissatisfied with his hands, he can dismiss them. In like manner, if the laborer is dissatisfied with the farmer, he can leave his employ. It is argued that exactly the same relation should exist between the great railroad corporation and the tens of thousands of men in its operating department. The proposition is not tenable. The circumstances are different. In the first place, it is of no practical consequence to the community whether difficulties which prevent the work of the farm from going on arise or do not arise between an individual farmer and his laborers. The work of innumerable other farms goes on all the same, and it is a matter of indifference what occurs in the management of the particular farm. So it is even with large factories, machine-shops--in fact, with all industrial concerns which do not perform immediate public functions. A railroad company does perform immediate public functions. The community depends upon it for the daily and necessary movements of civilized existence. This fact has to be recognized. For a railroad to pause in its operation implies paralysis to the community which it serves. Such being the fact, it is futile to argue that the ordinary relations of employer and employed should obtain in the railroad service. Something else is required; and because something else is required but has not yet been devised we have had the numerous difficulties which have taken place during the present year--difficulties which have occasioned the community much inconvenience and loss.