"That's Pete every time. Flares up quick, and every time he flares up I can remember when we were working the day-and-night tricks in a God-forsaken junction out on a prairie stretch of the Great West. He's like a boy in some ways--awfully fussy about the rights and prerogatives of his department; and he'll go all to pieces over some little thing if he thinks another man has stepped over on to his side of the line. But let a big situation arise--a flood that sets a whole division of our lines awash; a wicked congestion of traffic in midwinter blizzards; a nasty accident that takes away our nerve--and you ought to see Pete! He'll be handling the thing as if he were putting a ball up on the links, and he'll never lose his confident smile. That man in one such emergency is worth the hire of a dozen Pullmans." You ask about the upper cabinet, and the president lowers his voice. The board is no matter for light conversation. He steps to the window and points down into the concourse of the train-shed. "I happen to know that young fellow over there by the mailbox," he answers. "He's one of our travelling freight-agents. He's lucky. He works for one boss, and is responsible to him; I work for a whole regiment of bosses, and am held responsible by a group of pretty keen old citizens who gather around this table and put me on the rack. "There are many interests in this property, and some of them are too big to sleep in the same bed. I have three directors who never speak to one another outside of this room, and rarely ever in it. There is another who represents the holdings of a road that fights this at every turn, and he hurts the property worse than any good husky plague. A big estate, with a bitter aversion to spending money for any purpose whatsoever, has another director here; and a banking interest presents a director who seconds him in every move, fool or good. That is the crowd I have got to work with when I want ten or fifteen millions to hold our own against some other fellow who is crowding us hard for business in our competitive territory or threatening to run a line into one of our own private melon-patches. That boy down there is lucky. He has only got to get out and land a couple of hundred carloads from a shipper who hates corporations worse than politics, and who has just had a claim for spoiled goods turned down by this particular corporation. That boy has the cinch job." * * * * *