and tear down. Add to this the supplanting of
competent executive officers by a staff of political trenchermen, ignorant
alike of the science of railroading, and the equally important sub-science
of industrial manhandling, and you have the kindling for the fire of
insurrection which had been slowly smoldering in the Trans-Western service
since the day when Major Guilford had issued his general order Number One.

At first the fire had burned fitfully, eating its way into the small
economies; as when the section hands pelt stray dogs with new spikes from
the stock keg, and careless freight crews seed down the right of way with
cast-off links and pins; when engineers pour oil where it should be
dropped, and firemen feed the stack instead of the steam-dome.

But later, when the incompetence of the new officials became the mocking
gibe of the service, and the cut-rate avalanche of traffic had doubled all
men's tasks, the flames rose higher, and out of the smoke of them loomed
the shape of the dread demon of demoralization.

First it was Hank Brodrick, who misread his orders and piled two freights
in a mountain of wreckage in the deep cut between Long Pine and Argenta.
Next it was an overworked night man who lost his head and cranked a switch
over in front of the west-bound Flyer, laying the 1020 on her side in the
ditch, with the postal and the baggage-car neatly telescoped on top to
hold her down.

Two days later it was Patsy Callahan; and though he escaped with his life
and his job, it was a close call. He was chasing a time freight with the
fast mail, and the freight was taking the siding at Delhi to let him pass.
One of the red tail-lights of the freight had gone out, and Callahan
mistook the other for the target lamp of the second switch. He had time to
yell at his fireman, to fling himself upon the throttle-bar and to set the
airbrake before he began to turn Irish handsprings down the embankment;
but the wrecking crew camped two whole days at Delhi gathering up the
debris.

It was well on in the summer, when the two divisions, east and west, were
strewn with wreckage and the pit tracks in the shops and shop yard were
filled to overflowing with crippled engines, that the insurrectionaries
began to gather in their respective labor groups to discuss the growing
hazards of railroading on the Trans-Western.

The outcome was a protest from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers,
addressed to the receiver in the name of