But the _Situation_ does not tell the entire story. Out in the nearest passenger yard is a big private-car, almost as handsome and as well equipped as that of the president of the road, and that car is in service as many days as it stands idle there upon the siding. This man has 4,000 miles of railroad empire in his domain; there are nearly 70,000 faithful privates for his army. To cover that territory means constant travel. There are side-lines of less importance that sometimes do not see him for six months at a time. Of less importance, did we say? We had better not let him hear us breathe that, for there are men in his employ who remember the first council of the operating department staff after this G. M. came to the road. They were gathered there for the time-table meeting--a general superintendent, a whole round dozen of division superintendents, serious traffic-minded folk from the passenger department, an auxiliary corps of chief clerks and stenographers. Division by division, the passenger time-table problem was adjusted. This superintendent asked a little more running time, for they were putting in a cluster of new bridges, which made slow orders necessary; another was thereupon forced to shorten his schedule, for the total running time between main-line terminals of a road in hot competitive territory could not be increased a single sixty seconds. Finally, after a vast amount of argument, the main-line divisions were settled, and attention was given to the side-lines. The first of these ran through a section purely rural, but there was not a busier 500 miles of single track in the East. The general superintendent called attention to it, with a laugh. "We'll now tackle the hoejack," said he. It was an old joke, and the division heads began to laugh. They stopped laughing the next instant. The new general manager was on his feet and pounding thunderously upon his table top. His face was crimson, as he demanded attention. "Gentlemen," said he, scathingly, "the great railroad from which I have had the honor to come has prided itself upon being a standard railroad. Its standard is universal wherever its cars and engines run, and its jurisdiction extends. Some of its lines are the busiest traffic-haulers in the land. The four and even six tracks to each of them are hardly enough for the great volume of high-class freight and passenger traffic that press upon their rails. There are some side-lines, with but two or three trains a day--side-lines that reach the main-line only through other branches. But there are no hoejacks, nor peanut branches, nor jerkwaters upon that system. Hereafter there are to be none upon this. The man who is hauling a train on the most remote corner of this railroad is doing its work quite as much as the biggest trainmaster here at the terminal. I trust you follow me?"