Out in the Middle West they are trying still another experiment. Several roads have begun letting their local agents pay small and obvious transit claims right out of their cash drawers, instead of putting them through the devious and time-taking routine of the claim departments. Under the new plan the agent first pays the claim--if it does not exceed twenty-five dollars, or thereabouts--and the claim department checks up the papers. There may be cases where the road loses by such methods, but they are hardly to be compared with the friends it gains. An express company has adopted the plan, three or four railroads are giving it increasing use. The idea is bound to spread and grow. And not the least of its good effects will be the increased self-respect of the agents themselves. The trust that the road places in them gives them new trust in themselves. Blinks has a little way of talking about courtesy--which in effect goes something after the same fashion. He generally gives the little talk when a new man comes upon his small staff. "The best exercise for the human body," he tells the man, "is the exercise of courtesy. For it reflects not only upon the man who is its recipient, but in unseen fashion upon the man who gives it." After all, railroading is not so much engineering, not so much discipline, not so much organization, not so much financing, as it is the understanding of men. CHAPTER VII THE LABOR PLIGHT OF THE RAILROAD Some eighteen per cent of the 2,000,000 railroad employees of the land, receiving a little over twenty-eight per cent of their total pay-roll, are affiliated with the four great brotherhoods--of the engineers, the firemen, the conductors, and the trainmen. In fairness it should be added that the reason why this eighteen per cent in numerical proportion, receives twenty-eight per cent in financial proportion, is that the eighteen per cent includes the larger proportion of the skilled labor of the steel highway. Offhand, one would hardly expect a track laborer to receive the same wages as Freeman, whose skill and sense of responsibility entitles him to run the limited.