Yet how about this section-boss, this man whom we have just interviewed as he stands beside his job, the man who enables Freeman's train to make her fast run from terminal to terminal in safety? Remember that in summer and in winter, in fair weather and in foul, this man must also measure to his job. He must _know_ that his section--six or seven or eight or even ten miles--is, every inch of it, fit for the pounding of the locomotive at high speed. You do not have to preach eternal vigilance to him. It long since became part of his day's work. And to do that day's work he must work long hours and hard--as you have already seen--must be denied the cheeriness and companionship of men of his kind. He frequently must locate his family and himself far apart from the rest of the world. All of this, and please remember that his average pay is about one-third of the average pay of the engineer. It is plain to see that no powerful brotherhood protects him. If space permitted we could consider the car-maintainer. His is an equally responsible job. Yet he, too, is unorganized, submerged, underpaid. His plight is worse than that of the station agent--and we have just seen how Blinks of Brier Hill earns his pay. As a matter of fact Blinks is rather well paid. There are more men at country depots to be compared with Fremont--men who give the best of their energy and diplomacy and all-round ability only to realize that their pay envelope is an appreciably slimmer thing than those of the well-dressed trainmen who ride the passenger trains up and down the line. The trainman gets a hundred dollars a month already--and under the Adamson law he is promised more. This, however, may prove one thing quite as much as another. It may not prove that the trainman is overpaid as much as it proves that the station agent is underpaid. Personally, I do not hesitate to incline to the latter theory. I have learned of many trainmasters and road foremen of engines who have far less in their pay envelopes at the end of the month than the men who are under their supervision and control. And there is not much theory about the difficulty a road finds, under such conditions, to "promote" a man from the engineer's cab to the road foreman's or the trainmaster's office. In other days this was a natural step upward, in pay and in authority. Today there is no advance in pay and the men in the cab see only authority and responsibility and worry in such a job--with no wage increase to justify it.