up.

get anything a cry for vengeance goes Other men may make mistakes; not the despatcher. His nerves must be iron and must never fag, never wear. Sitting in his den, he directs his train movements every day, and his life, burned out like the electric current at his key, is one of the little sacrifices we exact as the price of our living in the country and doing business in the city, of crossing a continent in days instead of weeks, of getting our letters with the speed of telegrams and our papers and magazines wet from the distant press.

Every detail of speed in the operating of a railroad falls within the despatcher's care, and as the nerves of the body extend over all parts of it, so the railroad nerves in the despatcher's wires reach everywhere. On him the passenger trains are dependent much of the time for orders, and though the new effort is to do wholly away with train orders in the running of trains, the orders are still the practice.

More helpless still than the passenger trains in their dependence on the despatcher are the lower-class trains, especially the freights which are compelled to keep out of the way of the passenger traffic that shoots so swiftly in and out of the terminal station. The passenger train is the roadster trimmed to a light wagon for a fast pace, and it takes the right of way unquestioningly over the freight trains-patient draft horses that pull the heavy trucks of commerce. The demands of passenger traffic often cause these to be laid out in yards and on sidings for unreasonable periods between terminals, and in consequence there come times of traffic pressure when it is almost impossible for provision to be made for the rest of train and engine crews. The train-despatcher, ever so well disposed, finds himself helpless to get slow-freight crews to their terminals within reasonable hours. When traffic is heavy, fast freight trains add their burden to the passenger service, and the track becomes, as far as the slow freights are concerned, in a state of blockade. The despatcher frequently is blamed for the inhumanity; but he like all other railroad men, is one under authority and can do only the best that is possible. Ultimately better

provision must be made for the rescue of the slow-train crews from so many hours without sleep or rest.

There have been within recent years periods of traffic pressure on our railroads that have borne far too heavily on the slow-freight train and engine crews. Nothing is more curious in our humanitarian code than the fact that we scruple at the overloading of a horse and take so slight account of that of a man. We never overload a bridge and rarely a building; a train-despatcher who should attempt to overload an engine would be looked on as merely insane; and that an engineman should, under any circumstances, be kept at a throt tle for eighteen or twenty hours is an overloading of the nerves of a railroad.

It will not do to blame the managers alone for this; the responsibility is wider in that the men share it. Extra hours mean extra pay, often "double time," and the temptation of a big pay-check at the end of the month is a factor in this physical waste in the railroad life.

In the train-shed it is growing late; the last of the through day trains are arriving. While the passengers pour up through the ticket gates in a stream, the engineman, getting stiffly down from the gangway, has walked forward to feel his engine as the trainer lays a greeting hand on the neck of his trotter after the race. The spent engine is drooping from the pace of the run. In the cab the steam is falling on the gauge. The air-pump, breathing slowly, recovers the pressure spent in the stop, and, its duty done, the great engine impatiently awaits the signal to retire to the roundhouse. Above the ticket gates the train bulletin lights are dark and the gatemen have gone. There will be no more trains out and no more in to-night save over on the last track, where a solitary light awaits the coming of a belated and stormbound express train from the West.

On the outskirts of the city the tracks that have taken care all the evening of the passenger travel are alive now with freight trains making their weary way to the yards. All night they will come and go. It is past midnight, and the freight terminal is now just waking; but the passenger terminal sleeps.

P

ESSIMISM in regard to municipal government is a fashion. But it is worse than a fashion, it is an influence. It cripples progress. It tries to halt all action. It advocates postponement thereof until the arrival of the civic millennium. And it is blind. It does not see that the greater the contemplated advance, the deeper must be the agitation, the wider the public interest, the stronger the demand that the advance be all along the line. The strong men of a community do not try to lead when that community is standing still. Why should they? Let pessimism have its way and it will breed cause for its own existence from the stagnation it produces.

During the last ten years this fashion, this influence, has been very successful in directing public attention to itself. But during that same decade another influence has been at work, quietly, steadily, but effectively. The pro moters of the movement for civic embellishment did not intend to combat the prevailing notion as to things municipal. They were rot discussing theories or tendencies. They were after results. But what weight they have 'thrown and are throwing into the hopeful side of the scale whereby the merits and demerits of municipal government are being measured against each other! Many politicians have adopted the idea. The City Beautiful has appealed to them and surely there is hope in that. Others have opposed, with results not according to their liking. The pessimists have noticed the agitation a little, but only to condemn. This movement

for the City Beautiful-a dream, they say, that will give the politicians that much more chance to enrich themselves. "Don't show them another way to steal," one voiced it and went his way. But was it for nothing that Riis and his coworkers demanded a healthier and more beautiful city-did that demand have nothing to do with Democratic New York's two-foot step upward, even though, like the frog, the city has just dropped back one foot preparatory to a later and another two-foot advance? Was it an evanescent dream that made Republican Harrisburg elect a Democratic Mayor who declared that Harrisburg could be made many times more attractive? If so, then such dreams are things machines must heed-and is there a case on record where the machines have had cause to heed the prophetic visions of your pessimist? Were not the merchants of San Francisco right when, in reply to the objections. that" their city officials did not command confidence, that the funds would be wasted, and that under an economical administration all the necessities could be secured from the regular budget-while the parks were luxuries which might be postponed," they answered that the remedy was to secure the better men and the improvements together? The voters thought so, anyway so far as the improvements were concerned, and voted two millions for parks and playgrounds at the last election; and the next generation will thank them for that when it has forgotten even the names of their officials.

We know that every section of Paris