new
Commission established consisting of two appointed and three _ex officio_
Commissioners, such Commission to be "a Court of Record, and have an
official seal, which shall be judicially noticed." One of the
Commissioners must be experienced in railway business; and of the three
_ex officio_ Commissioners, one was to be nominated for England, one for
Scotland and one for Ireland, and in each case such Commissioner was to
be a Judge of the High Court of the land. Under the Act of 1873, the
chief functions of the Commissioners were: To hear and decide upon
complaints from the public in regard to undue preference, or to refusal
of facilities; to hear and determine questions of through rates; and to
settle differences between two railway companies or between a railway
company and a canal company, upon the application of either party to the
difference. The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further
powers.

In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work
and done it well. For more than forty years I have read most if not all
the cases they have dealt with. On several occasions I have been engaged
in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.

CHAPTER X.
A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE

January, 1875, was a momentous time for me. In the second week of that
month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to
the tall stool and "the dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood." Before me
opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened
by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition. I was now chief
clerk to a general manager. Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud
and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.

Mr. Wainwright assumed the office of general manager on the first day of
the year. I say _office_, but in fact a general manager's office
scarcely existed. His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some
respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an
office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but
first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan
Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no
hobby, did not long survive his retirement from active business life.

Mr. Wainwright, who, like myself, was born in Sheffield, was twenty-three
years my senior. His early railway life was passed in t