As a rule the hobo becomes independently rich on the acquisition of ten dollars. Then he turns his face toward that town to which he gives his devoted allegiance. He now has money to pay fares; but he does not pay them. Summer is on the land and he likes to protract the joys of the road; so he beats his way slowly home and leaves a record of his migration executed in a chirography that is nothing less than marvelous. The day that masonry went out of fashion in railroad construction and concrete came in was a bonanza to him. On the flat concrete surfaces of bridge abutments and piers, telephone houses and retaining walls, he marks the record of his going and whither he is bound--and marks it so plainly with thick, black paint that even he who rides upon the fastest of the limited trains may read--although it may not be given to him to ever understand. Down in the Southwest the track laborer is Mexican, while in the Far West he is a little brown man, with poetry in his soul and a vast amount of energy in his strong little arms. The Japanese invasion has been something of a godsend to the railroads beyond the Rocky Mountains. Up in British Columbia, where John Chinaman is not in legal disfavor, you will find him a track laborer--faithful and efficient. On the Canadian Pacific seventeen per cent of the total force of trackmen is Chinese. At the west end of that Canadian transcontinental, the track gangs almost exclusively are Chinese. The Jap is not illegal in the United States, however, and he is turning rapidly to railroading. It is only fair to say that he is the best track laborer our railroads have known. He is energetic, receptive, ambitious, intelligent, and therefore easily instructed. His mind being retentive, he rarely has to be told a thing a second time. Though small, he is robust and possessed of powers of endurance far beyond any other race. Furthermore, he is cleanly--bathing and changing his clothes several times a week. His camp is always sanitary and he prides himself on the thoroughness of his work. You may be sure he is carrying a Japanese-English dictionary and that from it he is learning his three English words a day. Track workers from the south of Europe will spend a lifetime without ever learning a single word of English. There is another class of Asiatic workers that in recent years has begun to show itself along the west coast and this class is far less satisfactory in every way. These are the Hindus. They have drifted across the Seven Seas and marched into a new land through the gates of San Francisco or Portland or Seattle. But as yet they have not come in sufficient numbers to represent a new problem in American railroading. The Japanese already have attained that distinction.