Discrimination? Your attorney, skilled in the fine workings of the Interstate Commerce Law, may tell you "Yes," but we are inclined to think he is wrong, for the man was not permitted to alight at Rhinecliff because he was anything more than a patron of the road. He had no political or newspaper affiliations to parade before the conductor; he did not hint at his strength as a shipper, he did not even give his name. If there is discrimination in that, I fail to see it. A certain man took a trip from New York to Chicago three or four years ago. He went on a famous road, well conducted, and he returned on its equally famous competitor. Each road had just conquered a mighty river by boring an electrically operated tunnel underneath it. The tunnel had been well advertised and the man, whose mind had a mechanical turn, was anxious to see both of them. In each case the train bore a wide-vestibuled day coach as its last car. In the first tunnel through which he passed he went to the rear of the day coach with the intention of taking a look at the under-river bore. He wanted to stand at the rear of the aisle and look through the door at the electrically lighted tube. But the conductor anticipated him. He drew down the sash curtain of the car door. "Sorry," he said, "but the company's rules prohibit passengers from standing in the aisles." One might write a whole chapter on the thoroughly asinine rules that some roads have made for the guidance not only of their employees but of their patrons as well. But this man did not argue. He bowed dutifully to the strong arm of the rule book and went back to his seat--thoroughly cowed. But how different was the case on the other railroad, by which he returned from Chicago! This second time he went to the rear of the train, recalling his first experience and the rebuff he had received. But this road and its conductor were of a different sort. This second conductor was fastening the outside doors of the vestibule at the rear of the last car and saying to the little group assembled there: "If you will wait a minute I will give you a chance to get out on this rear platform and see the big job we've been working on so long. We all of us are mighty proud of it." How much of an asset do you suppose this conductor was to his company? By this time the new-fangled railroad executive who reads this will be filled with disgust. "Doesn't he know," I can hear him say, "that railroading has taken some pretty big strides within the past fifteen or twenty years? We're perfecting; we're systematizing. We've studied the motions of the bricklayer and we're dabbling in efficiency. We've modeled our railroads after the best of the standing armies of Europe and we've begun to move men like units. That means that we've no room in railroad ranks for individualists. An individualist never makes an ideal unit and the new efficiency demands units--not thinkers!"