The pain in the back caused from close association with a shovel from seven o’clock to twelve o’clock and from one o’clock to six even now, over twenty years afterwards, almost makes me break down and give vent to my feelings in a more noticeable manner than my friend Taft when he was informed that he had carried Utah. If you have ever been tortured with lumbago, you have a slight knowledge of what races up and down the back of a weed cutter. When he bends down he can’t get up and when he gets up he can’t get down. There you are! Humiliated, suffering and mad, knife blade sticking you whenever you move, but you must or bust. You are a free born American citizen but you must lose sight of the special endowment when you are cutting weeds. The constitution may be back of you, but just at present you have got to get back of your own constitution and a “darn” good one too, or you’ve lost your job and that dearly beloved stipend of thirteen and one-half cents an hour. Being on the low rung of the railroad ladder is the same as in all other departments, the man at the bottom gets the low wages, needs the good back and carries the heavy burden. He don’t need much brain; he is told what to do; how to do it and when. He’s told when to go to work and when to quit. Brains would be a nuisance and, if he had any, he wouldn’t be working on the section. Time has proved that, and the Dago takes his place. What became of the Irish, Swede, German and Bohemian section men of twenty-five years ago is more than I know. Extempore, an increase of brains did something for him and you don’t find him tramping ties with the Dago. But the man at the low rung hasn’t much choice; he can work or quit. His job is always in jeopardy as he couldn’t save enough in a year to loan out an occasional “fifty” to smooth the feelings of an over auspicious road-master. He’s at the bottom and whatever falls goes down to him and in an undignified way he must carry the whole load, for it can not go lower. The general manager can ease his feelings on the superintendent, and he on the road-master and the road-master can growl at the section foreman, but when the section foreman dumps the whole putrid, half-boiled mess on the unlearned day laborer you can see the urgent necessity of a fine piece of choice workmanship in the middle of the back. You seldom see a man with a front like a wash-tub turned edgewise working on the railroad. There is no room for him! You must be able to see your feet if you cut weeds, and have a stomach that can say “Hello” to the backbone at nine fifteen A. M.