"Accidents and storms! When we get a smash-up on this section or on one of my neighbors' we all turn to and help the wrecking crew. I've worked fifty-one hours with no more than a snatch of sleep and without getting out of my clothing--and that was both accident and storm. It's storm that counts the most. It's nice and pretty out here today, even if a little warmish. Come round here next February, when the wind begins to whistle and the mercury is trying to hide in the bottom of its little tube, and help me replace rails in a snow-packed track." Against conditions such as these the railroad finds no little difficulty in securing good trackmen. The section-boss will tell you how, until about twenty years ago, these were largely Irishmen, with a fair mixture of Germans and Scots--even a few Englishmen. The Italians began coming over in droves a little more than a quarter of a century ago and almost the first men they displaced were the Irish trackmen on our railroads. Perhaps it would be fairer to say they took the jobs which the Irishmen were beginning to scorn. The latter preferred to become contractors, politicians, lawyers. What is the use of driving like a slave all day long, they argued, when you can earn five times as much by using your wits? Of recent years there have been few Irishmen in track service--an occasional section-boss like the man to whom we have just been talking--and with the exception of Wisconsin and Minnesota, practically none of the men from the north of Europe. Even the better grades of Italians have begun to turn from track work. They, too, make good contractors and politicians and lawyers. In the stead of these have come the men from the south of Italy, Greeks, Slavs, a few Poles, and a few Huns. These seem particularly to lack intelligence. Yet they seemingly are all that the railroad may draw upon for its track maintenance.