Here is the yardmaster at a great interior railroad centre--we call it Somerset for the sake of convenience. His is one of the biggest yards in all this land, and he is a man whose judgment should be solidly respected. There are four improvements in his yards that he deems absolutely necessary in the face of a rapidly increasing traffic, and for a portion of the property that depreciates rapidly under hard usage. His is a most important position; and yet as he cannot spend a cent himself for the use of the railroad, not even to buy matches, he embodies his four requests for necessities into a requisition and forwards it to headquarters--at a seaboard city. His superior officer thinks that Somerset is asking a good deal, and he cuts the request down to three items. The next link in the chain is a man--an auditor, perhaps--who happens to be imbued with a strong streak of economy at that time. Middle division has had its appropriation cut thirty-three per cent, so off comes another item from Somerset yard. After a time, the yardmaster is lucky to get one single item through--and that is sure not to be the essential item that he needed most of all. Good, plucky, valiant railroader that he is, he is sure to think the whole outfit in the general offices a set of arrant fools. Perhaps the big accident comes, and then perhaps he has full opportunity to set himself straight. It is more likely that he does not, and that he is made the target for Grand Jury indictment and a lot of other fireworks. That is an instance of the complications of the modern railroad--the vast intricacy of organization. Wonder not, then, that many a general manager of to-day must think twice before he remembers that some particular inland town is one of the obscure branches of his property. * * * * * The superintendent deals with men; the general manager, with superintendents. That statement is open to a slight modification. The superintendent deals with the operating army in individual cases; the general manager deals with them collectively. Somewhere in rank between the division superintendent and the general manager stands the general superintendent, but in the rapidly changing structure of American railroad operation, his office is fast losing its individuality, is to-day in real danger of utter extinction. On some railroads he is hardly more than a chief clerk to the general manager, a rubber-stamp whose signature goes mechanically upon papers bound upwards from division superintendent to general manager. At the most he is to-day an outside man, getting up and down the line and making constant reports to his boss, the general manager. [Illustration: OIL-BURNING LOCOMOTIVE ON THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC SYSTEM THE STEEL PASSENGER COACH, SUCH AS HAS BECOME STANDARD UPON THE AMERICAN RAILROAD ELECTRIC CAR, GENERATING ITS OWN POWER BY A GASOLINE ENGINE BOTH LOCOMOTIVE AND TRAIN--GASOLINE MOTOR CAR DESIGNED FOR BRANCH LINE SERVICE]