The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-08
HEART ID HEART
 TALK WITH MEN Railroad President Faces En- pIoyes on Verge of Strike SOME PRACTICAL COUNSEL Charles 8. Mellen, President of New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, Delivers Thought
 ful Address.
SOME PRACTICAL COUNSEL
From the New York Herald.


 Hartford, Conn.-"I would like to pay the men of our company better wages and allow them greater privileges than my neighbors, but if I do some one else will take my place who will bring about an equitable comparison. If our em- ployes could only know the struggle it has been for the last few months to keep so many of them at work at all, they would feel our officials have had their interests in mind"
 Charles S. Mellen. president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. whose four thousand car shop employees are threatening to strike, said this to- night in an address before the Working mems Free Reading Room association. Meanwhile disgruntled labor unions were meeting in New Haven. During his ad dress he was frequently interrupted by applause. MT. Mellen said in part:
 Tt Is my desire to merit and enjoy the confidence and good will of workingmen, especially those directly employed by our company, and a time when our relations with our employees are strained is the most opportune for better understanding and a better acquaintance, which is mosst effective agency for the elimination of controversy. l am nothing more or less than workingman myself. Born of parents who had to work for a living, l have personal knowledge of the trials and privations of living a small income, and from childhood have remembrance of the denia1s and economies necessary in a New England family to preserve existence and to give ones children that opprtunity in life always desired, but often denied to one self
 Speaks as an Equal.
 "It required all my parents income to care for their necessities and to give their children an education. Their only invest ment was their belief that those children would not fail them and our endeavor has been that none of their drafts should go to protest.
 Therefore, I speak to you from the platform of equality, from the standpoint of experience, from the position of well wisher, and from desire to be of assist nnce, for l have only contempt for the man who forgets his forbears, who be- lieves himself of better clay than his neighbors. who ignores and seeks to con sign to oblivion his day of small begin nings, who tries to draw up the ladder by which he has climber, or who, con- scious of his own inefficiency, seeks to ob- struct others for fear he may be passed In his struggle for the goal.
 q yield to no one of you that you have worked harder. longer hours, or for less pay; that you have had harder or longer task masters. or more disagreeable; that you have been more apprehensive Of the future or more bitter over injustice, or that the spirit of Encouragement has ever made the world darker than seemed possible to bear, so dark that almost any change was promise of improvement
 "It Is In the hope that I may encour- age many of you to preserve, that l may convince you that your part in the world is important, that you do not. cannot live in vain, that I may as result of my own experiences set you right set you to thinking that 1 am neglecting other mat ters I can III afford to do to have heart to heart talk with you this evening. The hope and future of this country lie in the common people, in the workingmen, in yourselves
 Looking for the Man Who Works.
 ''This is the age of the worxingmen. The captains of industry of the future are among you struggling at days wages for recognition Men of affairs are look ing earnestly for them, for there Is great dearth of men for the higher posi- tions the modern industrial combinations are creating, and the duties of these posi- tions are so exacting they wear out quickly those who fill them, causing con- stant changes.
 But they are not looking for firebrands for trouble breeders, for takers, but rath- CT for the quiet man who works while others do the talking; the one who is as much interested in his work as his wages, and such men when found need no help from any source to secure either recog- milton or increase of pay
 ITO those of you who belong to unions wish to say I believe they have accom- plished much good. but they are never theless not an unmixed blessing to the laboring man. They tend to the discour- agement of individual effort and reduce man to part of a machine.
 ''They are good thing for the drones, inc inefficient man, for the walking dele gate and the officers, but are unnecessary for the man who has the stuff and cour- age within himself to carve his own way in the wrold.
 'srhere are many workingmen who can earn more than they do whose employers would gladly pay them more only they have become classified and an advance to them means an advance also to their inefficient associates of a similar class, making 1t often too formidable a matter for consideration. When I say unions do