The Topeka state journal., 1909-03-20

pretty good show. The reading room
audiences are made up. almost ex-
clusively in the Kansas towns of rail-
way people The farther west you go,
1T is said, the larger the event looms in
the towns history. Out on the edge
of things where there is little in the
way or amusement and diversion, the
people pack the reading rooms for
tnese entertainments and come from
miles around. Although primarily for
Santa Fe employees, others are well
come. Of course in these division
points most of the people are Santa Fe
made up almost exclusively of San
ia Fe men and their families and ey-
erybody, it is said goes to the reading
room concerts, officials, clerks, train
men and shop men.
Sometimes there are dances after
the concerts and the members of the
company have the pleasure and priv
ilege of meeting the audience person
ally. The Capital City Concert com
pany hopes this will happen in Gallup,
New Mexico, where one stop will be
made, and where the ranchmen and
cowboys make up a good part of the
audience. Think of dancing with a
real cowboy. Wouldn't it be Perfectly
Grand?
The Why of 1t All
Sometimes when you tell people,
who don't know about the Santa Fe
Shows" of the Busser idea, which, by
the way, is being taken up by other
railways. and is attracting much at
tentiOn from sociologists, somebody
asks: whats the Answer?" Why
does the Santa Fe spend thousands of
dollars annually to maintain clubs for
its employees and give free entertain
ments for them and their families?
But the answer is just the same old
reason: Business. Not philanthropy.
not charity, not sociological expert
ment but plain business-plain, prac-
tical, everyday business. The Busser
idea is that better conditions for the
employees means better class of en-
ployes, better service and bigger div
idends, and it is because the Busser
idea has proven practical and actual
ly pays that the stockholders stand
for it.
You will not find the Busser idea
being tried by mismanaged roads, the
roads whose stock is below par on
the market, and which is not sought
by investors. The Busser idea has in
some of the shrewdest railway mana
gers in the country.
You may say what you please about
a loftier ideal, Does it pay?" is a
pretty good general test.
For many years it has been recog
nized that honesty is the best business
policy and that there is no graft equal
to it, and there is a gradually spread
ing conviction that the Golden Rule
is not so impracticable theory after
all-that It is good business as we'll
as good ethics. The success of the
Busser idea is one of a number of
signs of a growing consciousness in
the industrial and commercial world,
of the fact that the Golden Rule may
be applied with profit to everyday
life-that it is. in the last analysis,
only the highest form of that 'en-
lghtened SelfiShnesS'' which is at
once the strictest duty and the sim
plest common sense.
There was some concern among his
friends in Topeka lest Darwin Brad
ley put too much weight on this trip.
which appeals especially to one of his
well-nourished appearance, on account
of the justly celebrated Harvey House
meals. But at every stop he may be
seen beating it, up the track from
the Pullman car to the station carry
ing the heavy luggage for the femmes
in the company and the exercise will
tend to keep down MS embonpoint
(whatever that is). Harley Whitman
did a sketch of him especially for the
State Journal in this heroic role. But
the laugh may be on Mr.. Whitman yet.
He has a song called "a Son of the
Desert Am l." and what If, at Gallup,
New Mexico, say. when he is singing
about being bold and reckless and
free. the cowpunchers who come IN
for the concert, should take a notion
to make him prove it and start to
shoot him up? A F.
Tell your carpenter to see J. Thomas