f the Board of Railroad Commissioners of the
State of Massachusetts. After twenty years' constant association with
railroad men, Mr. Adams should certainly know the character of his
quondam colleagues. In his book, "Railroads, Their Origin and Problems,"
he says of them: "Lawlessness and violence among themselves [_i. e._,
the various railroad systems], the continual effort of each member to
protect itself and to secure the advantage over others, have, as they
usually do, bred a general spirit of distrust, bad faith and cunning,
until railroad officials have become hardly better than a race of
horse-jockeys on a large scale. There are notable exceptions to this
statement, but, taken as a whole, the tone among them is indisputably
low. There is none of that steady confidence in each other, that easy
good faith, that _esprit du corps_, upon which alone system and order
can rest. On the contrary, the leading idea in the mind of the active
railroad agent is that some one is always cheating him, or that he is
never getting his share in something. If he enters into an agreement,
his life is passed in watching the other parties to it, lest by some
cunning device they keep it in form and break it in spirit. Peace is
with him always a condition of semi-warfare, while honor for its own
sake and good faith apart from self-interest are, in a business point of
view, symptoms of youth and a defective education." And again, in an
address delivered before the Commercial Club of Boston in December,
1888, Mr. Adams expressed his opinion concerning the average railroad
manager of to-day as follows: "That the general railroad situation of
the country is at present unsatisfactory is apparent. Stockholders are
complaining; directors are bewildered; bankers are frightened. Yet that
the Interstate Commerce Act is in the main responsible for all these
results, remains to be proved. In my opinion, the difficulty is far more
deep-seated and radical. In plain words, it does not lie in any act of
legislation, State or National; and it does lie in the covetousness,
want of good faith and low moral tone of those in whose hands the
management of the railroad system now is; in a word, in the absence
among men of any high standard of commercial honor. These are strong
words, and yet, as the result of a personal experience stretching over
nearly twenty years, I make bold to say they are not so strong as the
occasion would justify. The railroad system of th