The secret service stands just back of the claim-agents. It has greater or less recognition in the case of different railroads but its work is generally much the same. It is police. Sometimes it is organized like the police department of a small city, with captains and inspectors at various division headquarters, and at other times its very existence is denied by the railroad heads. But its work is much the same. Its men, generally chosen for fitness from city police or detective staffs, sometimes root out tramps or small thieves along the line and in the freight-yards, sometimes in gay uniform patrol the platforms of crowded passenger terminals, sometimes work with greatest secrecy in "plain clothes"--which in this case may be jeans or overalls--to detect theft or treason among employees, and sometimes they receive their greatest laurels in connection with the "fake" suits that are brought against the railroad. The secret-service works night and day. Its members, with the claim-agents, are at the scene of a serious accident as quickly as the wrecking-train itself. Together with the railroad's own corps of surgeons, retained in every important town, and chosen for absolute honesty and integrity, they form an important adjunct of the personal injury claim service. * * * * * The financial officer of the railroad is, of course, the treasurer. It is he who receives its earnings--running possibly into a hundred millions dollars in the course of a twelvemonth--and disburses them for supplies and for wages, for taxes and for bond coupons, and, it is to be hoped, for dividends. He works through appointed banks; and the bank president who can go out and capture one or two good railroad accounts for his institution has earned his salary for several years to come. The selection of the banks is one of the dramatic phases of the inside politics of railroading; it is a cause of constant wire-pullings and heartburnings. "Do you see that whited sepulchre down there?" a big railroad head laughs to you as he points to a white marble skyscraper closing the vista of a city canyon. "This road built that temple of business. Our account is its backbone. Sometimes we deposit a million dollars a day and it is no uncommon thing for our balance there, approaching coupon or dividend times to reach sixteen or seventeen million dollars." He laughs again, then grows confidential. "We're in a bit of a hole," he admits. "Some of the big manufacturers downtown are organizing a bank, and it looks as if it was going to be a pretty solid sort of institution. They want a big account from us, and our traffic people are urging their cause. In the long run they'll get the account."