It was true. The great man had lost his nerve. Not for weeks did he regain his usual tone. The leaders in New York were greatly disappointed by his lack of “ginger;” his speeches did not have that telling quality they had possessed of old—in a word, he lost New York State and the Presidency—and all, perhaps, because a freight crew went to sleep on a siding out in Ohio. An incident, surely, to rank with the spider that saved Mahomet or the whinny which made Darius King of Persia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V THE NEW TIME-CARD SO, day by day, the work at the dispatchers’ office went on in its accustomed routine. Always there was the clatter of the keys, always the trains pulling in and out of the yards, always the coming and going of men like a mighty and well-disciplined army. They were servants of the mightiest industrial force in the world, the thing which had done most for the development of commerce, the advancement of trade—the thing without which, in a word, the world of to-day would not be possible. Few people realize the tremendous business done by the railroads of the world. In the United States alone, in a single year, besides the eight hundred million passengers carried, a billion and a half tons of freight are moved, the total passenger and freight mileage reaching the inconceivable total of two hundred and forty-two billion, for which the roads received nearly two and a half billion dollars, or more than twice the amount of the national debt. Figures like that, of course, make no impression on the mind—they are too vast, too grandiose for human comprehension. And the gigantic task of moving this freight and these passengers goes on from day to day, from hour to hour, in the usual course of things, just as the sun rises and sets, almost as though operated by a law of nature and not by man’s exertion, by the law of gravitation and not in defiance of it. And just as people grow accustomed to the miracle of sunrise and cease to wonder at it, so they grow accustomed to the miracle of steam. Only those who, day by day, do battle to keep the great machine in operation realize fully what a desperate battle it is. Allan West was soon to have a personal experience with a vital part of the mechanism with which he had never before come in contact. “Allan,” Superintendent Schofield said one morning, stopping beside his desk, “we’ve got our new time-card about ready, and I wish you’d arrange to-morrow so you can come and help us string the chart.” “String the chart?” repeated Allan. “Yes. It’ll interest you—besides, it’s something you ought to know. We’re going to throw Number Two half an hour later, and make one or two other changes.” Allan knew that the “time-card meeting” had been held at Cincinnati a few days before. Indeed, Mr. Schofield had talked over with him the projected changes, and the reasons for them.