The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-06-23
"Once a Railway Man Always a
Railway Man," Is Said.
Employees Who Leave the Work
Always Return to Road.
ARE MANY TYPES.
Better the Position, More At
tached to the Company.
other Items of General Interest
in Railroad World.

There used to be a saying, Once a
newspaper man, always newspaper
man. says the Railway Age-Gazette.
1t is quite true now, but no more so
than its paraphrase. Once a railway
man. always railway man" In view
OF the frequent changes in railway SER
vice personnel retirements from SER
vice for other reasons than because a
pension is available, and the numerous
recorded Instances in which it is sta
ted that Mr.. So-and-So has resigned
TO accept position with''-some man
Ufacturer of or dealer i'll railway sup
plies-this statement would, at first
thought, seem to require some quail
hcauon; but it is at least more true
than Voltaire was willing to admit any
general statement to be.
The fact is that in these DAYS of
specialization few men can claim to
know 1T all in either the newspaper or
the railway business, and perhaps to
some extent both the terms ''newspa-
per man" and railway man are mis-
I oners: but there is no occasion for
a quarrel about that
The point is that man is mechani-
cal engineer by education or growth,
a machinist or locomotive engine
man who has passed to a higher state
of existence or the one in control Of
the operation and repair of the cars
which he at first learned to build as
something more than an ordinarily
sk1lful carpenter.
The men who rise to the highest DO
sitions simply become a little more
really railway men than they were
before. The publisher who now buys
the kind of manuscript he used to hope
10 sell is perhaps in the same view
the real newspaper man. But the man
who continues as a mechanical engi-
neer or "A chemist, or what-not, is no
less IL echanical engineer OF a chem
list because he works for a railway
company.
The late Charles E. Perkins former
ly president of the Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy, once said: 81 do not know
what you mean by the education of a
railway man. 1 suppose a railway
lawyer is much the same as any other
lawyer and civil engineer employed
by railway does not thereby cease to
be civil engineer The application
of all this is that nearly every one of
the class of men to whom these re-
marks are specially directed-the me-
of the railway by whom he has been
employed, almost invariably finds his
business and his social relations among
the people who deal in the articles he
is accustomed te use, and is confronted
with the same problems with which
he has been accustomed to struggle.
He only grapples the problem from
little different standpoint. To return
again TO the illustration concerning the
newspaper man. 1t matters little as to
his general status and designation
whether he is trying to produce manu-
script that a publisher will buy, or
whether he, as publisher, is trying to
select for purchase such material as his
public will read with joy and pay for
With alacrity. On this basis, therefore,
from a psychological standpoint and
for the purposes of academic discus
sion, which is all that is intended here,
we may return to our original conclu-
sion-"Once a railway man, always a
railway man."