Even with this assistance there still remains a mass of detail in every railroad shop; and a large clerical force is one of its greatest efficiencies. A sharp and accurate accounting is kept of the cost of repairs upon each locomotive and car, even such general shop costs as gas and heat are pro-rated against it. There is no time that the railroad cannot tell to a nicety the precise cost of each unit of its equipment. These units are not, in many roads, increased, without precise orders from the board of directors or the executive committee of the board. In order to get around this rule some niceties in reconstruction have been known. A single timber of a worn-out freight car has kept the unit and the number of the old car, and going into the new has prevented the creation of a forbidden unit. The system upon which cars and locomotives are numbered varies greatly upon different systems. In some cases the first figures of the numbers indicate the class and style of the car or locomotive, in others they mean nothing. When a car or a locomotive is nigh worn out its number passes from it and is given to some newcomer. The old servant has a neatly painted "X" placed before its number. That "X" is its death warrant. In a little time it leads the way to the scrap heap. * * * * * The men who labor in the railroad shops see little of the romance of the line. Their work is much like that of the men who work in every sort of large shop. Their responsibility is not less than that of the other railroaders, the men to whom 150 or 300 miles of line and out-spread towns are as familiar as the very rooms of their own homes. A flaw in the steel, a careless bit of shopwork, may serve to derail the express at the least foreseen moment, to cause disaster in the ringing way that every railroad man sees at one time or another. It may not always be possible to trace the responsibility for such an accident. But there is a responsibility, and the men who work at forge or lathe, at press or planer feel that it is there. They form no mean brigade of this great industrial army of America.