executive directors of these great concerns and their men that caused the trouble, as an utter lack of sympathy or executive ability among petty subordinates; men clothed with brief authority, who failed to exercise it beneficently and intelligently. In my search I took in the history of several great enterprises that seemed to have escaped the troubles that beset others, and there I found further corroboration of the truth that intelligence and humanity were potential and that the reason these concerns had not had trouble was because of the intelligence, sympathy and firmness of the subordinate heads in charge of the various groups and classes of men. From my own experience, with a very miscel laneous lot of men numbering about 15,000 in the city of New York, men gathered from all quarters of the country and of all nationalities, I have had abundant proof that firmness, tempered with the intelligent sympathy for their necessities, works wonders.

And so, if I had to speak a word of advice concerning the most important principle in the proper adjustment of the relations between employer and em. ployee, it would be, "have a care in the selection of your subordinate heads." Ouly a man who knows the conditions and point of view of those he commands has the capacity to control or influence workingmen for their own good. If he has knowledge and experience that is common to them, if he knows the kind of lives they lead, the anxieties that pursue them, the ambitions they have for themselves and their families, he is surely the man indicated for advancement and control, it being always understood that he has executive capacity. To take a man who has executive capacity and has ad ministered it in one field, or among a certain class, and place him in charge of a group of men with whom he is not in the kind of sympathy I have stated, and expect him to control them intelligently, is out of the question, in my opinion. Such a man may take his orders from his superior and execute them with military decision, and yet fail to get what would be naturally expected out of his men. Nor will such a man keep his subordinates contented, and this element to my mind is of quite as much importance as a wage scale.

There has grown up also, my investigation shows me, a custom that from the human point of view is very cruel, but which from the economic point of view is absolutely essential. It is the custom of estimating the potential of men in mass as you would an engine, and by hard and fast rules expressing from the mass a

giveh number of units of product. When this custom is put into operation and there is lacking the sympathy and knowledge of conditions that I have spoken of, the result is at once brutalizing and disappointing. It is bound to break down of its own rigidity, and in my experience in the loug run it is not economical. I suppose that much that is justly complained of by working men and those who investigate their status will gradually disappear, as there is enlightened recognition of the profitableness of blending into the relationship of employer and employee the intelligent understanding I have spoken of, and which to my mind is essential to the peaceful and profitable prosecution of any kind of work in which great masses of men are engaged.

Tenure of Office.

In a recent address before the Traffic Club of New York, C. C. Riley, superintendent of transportation of the Erie Railroad, said:

"One of the serious handicaps under which American railroads labor is the instability of the tenure of office. All of us have known officials who refrain from doing some important work, for the reason that comparison of expense for work done the preceding year would cause unfavorable comment. The result is that we do most of our railroading in the past instead of in the future. Under present methods of operation on many railroads, when some needed reform is proposed, the question is not usually asked as to the necessity at the present time or for the future, but why it is needed now, inasmuch as it was not needed last year or the year before. If railroad officials could be given a stated tenure of office, there would be a remarkable improvement in the operation of railroading properties. Changes are entirely too frequent; commenced by the directors in the executive department, they travel all the way down the line.-Railway Age.

Aged in Five Years.

At 9:30 o'clock on the morning of November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, British Columbia, an old man, whose hair was snowy white, drove a golden spike into the cedar tie upon which the rails met from east and west.

The man was Donald Smith. The spike completed the Canadian Pacific. In the terrible five years of its building, from 1880 to 1885, he had changed from a strong, black-bearded, sturdy man to a whitehaired veteran.

In the following year Mr. Smith was rewarded for his services with knighthood in the order of St. Michael and St. George. His cousin, Mr Stephen, had already been recognized with a baronetcy, and both had been immortalized in the names of two of the greatest mountains of the Canadian rockies, Mount Donald and Mount Stephen.

Since the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway Lord Strathcona's appearance has scarcely altered. At the age of 84, says a writer in The World's Work, his eyes are as clear as they were 30 years ago. His form is slightly bent with age, but he still walks with firm and steady step. He talks freely and brightly on the topics of the day, though never committing himself on matters of state, and he always makes his visitor feel at ease from the moment he begins conversation to the time when he bids him a cheery "Goodby."

It is this sense of persistent kindliness that has won for him such a host of friends. Once you have experienced it you can well understand why the king and queen of England dispense with all formality where he is concerned-why they call him "Uncle Donald." You feel that he is "Uncle Donald" to you and to all the people who come within the circle of his friendship. This characteristic sums up the man as he is today.

There is one little feature which may mean much or little, but which a visitor to Lord Strathcona cannot but notice. When indoors he always wears a little brown mat of silk, daintily crocheted, on the top of his head to cover the place where the once abundant hair has disappeared.

Why he wears this little cap nobody seems to know, but there must be some reason of no ordinary nature, for it gives him a great deal of trouble, slipping over his head whenever he turns with a quick movement, as he often does when engaged in a conversation which interests him. He always balances it again carefully.

It may be some gift of the_olden days, some memento of a faithful Indian friend during his long and lonely sojourn in the Canadian wilds, or it may be the work of his wife's hands. Certain it is that some interesting history attaches to it and that Lord Strathcona sets a high value on the little square of worked silk.

Lord Strathcona sits close by his visitor and sometimes lays his hand on your knee with a gesture of paternal friendliness. At other times he will lean back with folded arms, his bright, deep-set, keen eyes twinkling with a merry light. The bushy, overarching white eyebrows but add to the kindliness of the man's whole countenance.

Where Glass Eyes are Made.

The glass eye crop comes from Thuringia. As Newfoundlanders are fishermen, or as Cubans are tobacco growers, so the typical Thuringian is a maker of glass eyes.

Almost every Thuringian house is a little eye factory. Four men sit at a table, each with a gas jet before him, and the eyes are blown from plates and molded into shape by hand. The colors are traced in with small needles, and as no set rule is observed in the coloring, no two eyes are exactly alike.

Sometimes a one-eyed man or womancome, may be, from a great distance-sits before one of these Thuringian tables, posing for a glass orb, and the artisan, with his gas jet, his glass and his needle, looks up at his sitter and then down at his work, the scene suggesting a portrait painter at work in his studio.-Detroit Free Press,

From the Midlands.

BY "ARGUS" IN RAILWAY REVIEW.

This column is not the place for a discussion of a political nature, neither is there time and space for same if it were. The subjects I have to deal with become so varied and manifold that the question becomes a difficult one how to do justice to each in the limited space at my disposal. Yet there are subjects that we should like to say a word on at times. One of these subjects, a very pressing one, is that of old-age pensions, and we want to say with many others, how keen is the disappointment we feel that another session is here, another King's Speech read, another programme of ministerial legislation proclaimed to the world, and still nothing done-no mention made of providing for this long-promised reform. What consolation is it to one who is growing old and cannot, try how he will, save a sufficiency out of his low wages to provide for his declining years, which are fast approaching, to know that our great workman politician says "it will come?" It will not come unless we commence at once. Let there be a million pounds put by this year as a nucleus of a fund, and then we shall have made a start. "Ministers mean to do this thing, they would like to do it, and they mean to do it," says John Burns. So they have said for years. But they do not begin. If our Labour Members do not set up a perfect din, such as the Home Rulers of days gone by and the suffragettes of today, over this longpromised reform, then they ought to be sent to the rightabout at next General Election. We have been promised this