[Illustration: THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC FINDS DIRECT ENTRANCE INTO SAN FRANCISCO FOR ONE OF ITS BRANCH LINES BY TUNNELS PIERCING THE HEART OF THE SUBURBS] [Illustration: PORTAL OF THE ABANDONED TUNNEL OF THE ALLEGHANY PORTAGE RAILROAD NEAR JOHNSTOWN, PA., THE FIRST RAILROAD TUNNEL IN THE UNITED STATES] On the other hand, the New York Central has also been brought into a high state of organization, and stands firmly on the departmental plan. "We believe that our superintendents should specialize in train operation," says one of the high officers of that road. "In other words, we do not believe that a man, to get his traffic through over a stretch of line, should necessarily know to a fraction of an inch the best wheel-base for an engine of a given type or the precise construction of a truss bridge. Such requirements take away from the special training that is to-day needed for every high-class railroader. A railroader is made better by sticking to one thing and sticking to it faithfully; and our departmental method, by which the maintenance of line and rolling-stock comes under the sole supervision of men expert in those specialties, we think the best. Sometimes we develop a very wizard in traffic handling, who has never had a chance at a technical education." And there you have the very essence of the other side of the proposition. Between these two sides there are various shadings and gradings, but the question has never been definitely solved. It has reduced the vast complexity in the organization of the modern railroad of the larger size. That has become so very complex it fairly cried for expert relief. One man has recently spent a busy term of years in simplifying the organization of the Harriman lines. To cut the intricate lines of red-tape in a big railroad office, to reduce to a minimum the vast needless correspondence between departments and between branches of a single department, is a problem that calls for genius--and offers for its solution no small reward. * * * * * In other days--and we refer to no ancient history, for the electric light was proved and the hundred-ton locomotive already increasing the average tonnage of the American freight train--the presidents of the biggest roads were content to worry along with one or two assistants. But two decades ago, the railroads were still simple matters; there did not exist the intimate relations between one and the others of them, as shown by stockholdings in competing and feeding lines to-day--the constant waiting of their executives upon the sessions of the different railroad commissions. These complications of American railroading have also further complicated the organizations of the different systems, and have brought a demand for executives of the keenest type. It is no slight strain that a man works under when he becomes the head of a ten-thousand-mile railroad.