Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-10-26
MELLEN IN TOWN
We'll Known Railroad Man at Water-
 buy Club What He Proposes.

s. Mellen and Vice-President Timo- thy E. Byrnes of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Co, the gentlemen being the guests of James s. Elton, one of the directors of the road. In the evening they were en- tertained at the Waterbury club and made addresses in which they touched upon almost everything of interest regarding railroad matters. Presi- dent Mellen's address was as follows:
 My first visit to Waterbury was in the spring of 1892, when as general manager of the New York and New England road I was making an in spection trip over the property. was then shown real estate acquired for union station and there was out lined to me in brief way the tm- provements contemplated.
 Tt would interest you greatly were able now to show you that plan for comparison with the improvements in your city now rapidly assuming form, but suffice it to say the real estate purchased In the past two years has been double in amount the whole original outlay contemplated by the plans of that date.
 "So while you have waited long and perhaps your patience has been sorely tried, you are gathers in hav- ing the subject treated in no such narrow way as was at first contem- plated.
 If contracts now under way are fulfilled within the specified time, 1t is my hope and intention to see run ming through your city by the time the Improvements here are completed through trains between Boston and New York that will give the prosper ous Naugatuck valley the service without change of cars to which it's business and population entitle it.. and this without reducing any facili- ties now enjoyed by other sections of the territory we serve.
 ''I must beg your indulgence in one matter, and that is the delay to which our service is subject between Wood- lawn and Grand Central station. It Is just and proper to hold our man agement responsible this side of Woodlawn for all that occurs, but we suffer with you the vexatious delays beyond, and it seems to me the situ- ation cannot improve very soon, and not improbably it may grow worse.
 Those in charge are apparently doing all in their power, but the vol ume of business has outgrown the facilities and much time and a great amount of patience on both your part and ours must be consumed before relief is in sight.
 At time when it Is so prevalent to indulge in much abuse of success, corporate and other wealth (which are but the evidences of it), to criti- else, malign and tear down that which but few have shown capacity to ere ate or build up; when hatred, malice and uncharitableness draw their in- spiration from those in high places, and when as result we are confront ed by possibility of the election to high office of those whose claim to distinction is more their ability to in- cite the powers of unrest than to ac- complish amelioration of conditions which have been admittedly unsatis- factory since the beginning of the worlds 1t not wise to pause mo- ment and consider whither we are drifting and consider whether the promises of those who seek prefer ment are made in honesty and good faith, and whether the makers of those promises have demonstrated in their own walks in life thus far such pre-eminent ability to justify con- q l tl xf ton they are other than the same character of self seekers who have imposed upon humanity in the same old way since the beginning of time.
 Whether we will or no, the busi- ness of the future will be more and more handled by corporations: sew eral individuals may accomplish with their means and brains, in combina- ton more than in any other way, and what will return the largest reward will ultimately prevail even though we in our ignorance, fear. and even seek to hamper and restrict. and do for time hamper and restrict, to our own ultimate detriment. the opera ton of natural laws.
 What confronts us to-day is not materially different from what has been met, and successfully, many times in the past. Some have profited by their intelligence in greater de- gree than others: others have att tached themselves to the successful ones and been carried to a greater measure of success than their deserts. others have inherited the results of the work of their forbears and are protected in the enjoyment of the same by the love and forethought or those gone before.
 Some have excited the envy. many the hatred. all the uncharitableness, of their fellows and the spacious promises of those in power and those who would supplant them, like the nostrums of the cuack physician. are seized upon as means of relief with out considering that the remedies are not those of experts. but are pre- pared without knowledge, adminis- tered without intelligence, and may produce worse conditions than those they are expected to relieve.
 Why it is that men unable to sue cessfnlly handle their own affairs are so frequently in evidence in handling those of the public. is one of the anomalies in human affairs no one is able to satisfactorily explain.
 That q good phrase maker, . facile writer. voiuble talkcr should be esteemed a statesman and com mani inc confidence of his fellows without evidence of constructive abil- isy Is perhaps one of the reasons we are trareling around in a circle with ont marked evidence of bettering conditions.