In strict justice, these men might have demanded restitution, but they only asked for honest treatment in the future. They did not ask for the abolishment of classification based upon merit, age or experience. The proposition is substantially this: If an engineer is compelled to pull the best train on the Burlington road, he should have the best pay. It is not material whether he has been an engineer one year or ten years--competency alone is the requisite. When the company places a man in charge of one of its great express trains, and intrusts to his skill and judgment the lives and property of its patrons, by that very act it certifies that he is a first-class engineer, and entitled to receive pay accordingly. A first-year man is not necessarily a man of inferior ability; the company would not risk its own property and reputation, nor would the public risk their lives, with third-rate men. Why, then, should the company insist on paying them third-class wages? It is injustice, imposition, and avarice! The man who is able to perform the work of a first-class engineer should receive first-class pay, whatever that may be; and he is a slave who accepts less. On the other hand the company takes this position: It places a man in a position which requires at his hands the skill, knowledge and ability of a first-class engineer. The first year it pays him much less than a first-class engineer's wages; the second year it slightly advances his wages, but still keeps them below that of the first-class; the third year he is paid their highest wages to an engineer (which is still less than that paid by other roads), having done the same character and quality of work for three years. The result is that the company is continually gaining from the men who are in their first and second year's service a large per cent of wages. It thus gains all the percentages in this scheme, because a number of men who work the first or second year do not remain long enough in the employ of this company to be entitled to the wages that are paid to the men who have served their third year. These first and second year men who resign to accept better positions on other roads, enter other occupations in life, or are crippled, killed, or discharged by the company, are replaced by other first and second year men, and the company is thus enabled to keep a large percentage of employes at greatly reduced rates of wages. No objection could be offered to paying those who had been employed on the road a long time an extra gratuity if so desired, nor could complaint be made if, in its generosity, the company wished to pension men who had served it faithfully a number of years; but when this gratuity (?), this generosity (?), is only a small portion of the sum stolen from the same employes, the men were only human and failed to appreciate the kindness intended.