Take drink--or rather, think of drink, and the general business code. Leaving aside the controversy which breeds such a remark as that a man would rather have prohibition than no alcohol at all, there has been a beneficent change in custom. In the old Bonaventure station at Montreal, over forty years ago, every pay day saw the office desks, in some departments, littered with almost as many whiskey bottles as pay checks. Where the bottle abounds, its unhappier fruits will be found also. It may be due to a lack of observation, as well as to a want of experience, but I cannot assert whether, in Montreal at that time, spiritual discussion was as inevitable a concomitant of spirituous indulgence as it was reputed to be in Scotland in days not lang syne. But nothing is more certain and more gratifying than the elimination of intoxicating liquor as an ingredient in daily business. With slacker social proprieties than we now enjoy, the lower standard of ethics in the railway business showed itself in manners which may be mentioned without offense, seeing that there have been great changes for the better. Forty years ago the great bodies of railway workmen were not organized in unions. The recurring bottle on the office desk had its fellow where men like engineers gathered together. The advent of labour unions, though it brought a few complications with which, perhaps, the services need not have been troubled, unquestionably raised the morale of all the bodies of men enrolled in them. To-day there is the severest look-down on the man who allows liquor to mar his efficiency--it was so, long before prohibition descended upon us. Any man in trouble because of drink gets very little sympathy and very short shrift from his union. With the rise in morale as to personal behaviour has come a corresponding advance in the breadth and ability with which the men’s side of labour difficulties is handled whenever cases of discipline arise--of which something presently. Improvement of morale does not largely influence another condition, which may not affect railways more than it does other walks of life: though, with the multitudes of men, and variety of departments, the situation may be thrown into stronger relief in railway administration than in some other branches of industry. I allude to promotion, and the reasons why some men--most men--do not rise high or fast. An old friend in London who had developed a unique business out of nothing, was asked what percentage of those who had worked under him during sixty years had enough executive capacity to deal with an emergency when their superior was away, without being frightened by their assumption of responsibility. His answer was: “Perhaps two per cent.--not more.”