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a human unit on the division in too big a hurry to stop, look, and listen.

"To become a successful railroader a man must be big enough between the ears to like a job that is never going to grow easy," said this train master; "and he must have come into the world with something inside which, when he sets out for a place in particular, will keep his feet moving until he arrives. When he comeş into the service he will find himself as closely coupled with other men as box cars in an apple train. He will learn that each of those box cars is rolling on no wheels but its own. What will he do in an emergency? We have to train him. up so he'll know-and so we'll know, too.

"We must begin with the right material. One day an applicant couldn't see why I had to know all about his parents and his home life, and what kind of a trail he could leave with a fountain pen when all he had asked for was a job at braking on freight. I explained to him that

STARTING OVER THE MOUNTAINS

I had never hired a brakeman or a fireman in my life; that all I was looking for was material that would work up into topnotch conductors and engineers; that setting brakes and throwing coal were. not jobs, but just a college course.

"I want boys who have been through the high school. The mental training is necessary. If a boy is a slouch in appearance, if his teeth are neglected, or if he wears his hat on the back of his neck, I pull the pin on him before we ever get under way. Every time I look over a prospective brakeman I am trying to decide whether, in fifteen or twenty years, he will be able to come into the car and say "Tickets, please!' without making the passengers wish they had taken some other line.

"The boy must know that whatever fear he has is a baby trait he is going to

outgrow. I draw him a pretty lurid picture of the hardships and dangers. If determination still sticks out the corners of his mouth and eyes, I know that boy is full of little particles now harder than cartilage that will crystallize into grains of sand while he is being

made into a trainman.

"If the student survives six weeks of it he is sent to the examiners. If he makes ninety per cent on the rules he becomes an extra brakeman with pay. He is subject to call day or night. After being used for half a year or for a year and a half to chink every undesirable hole, he gets a regular run. He can then put his bed in the caboose, hang his clothes in the locker and buy an interest in the cook stove. When he is not 'riding high', switching, or wrestling less than carload lots, he is discussing train

THE RIGID ARM THAT SIGNIFIES MUCH

When that signal stands beside the track it means the air lever, quick and hard.

handling, change of time table, and the principles of transportation with his conductor. He is learning to think straight,

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passengers, given a punch, and measured for a suit of blue. He handles excursion trains and extras until he comes into a run of his own.

"The passenger conductor is the finished product. He soon shows whether the long process of making has been wasted. It is like making diamonds. In addition to the twenty thousand dollars the company has paid him in wages, the time spent in teaching him and the property broken up amounts to an investment of five thousand more. Usually we have to drive him into his first uniform with a club. Brass buttons burn his bosom like redhot rivet heads, but before the conductor has completed his first round in quest of tickets the qualities that have been developing since his first days as a cub bring him a sense of self-possession. The vast difference is that now his cargo talks back, as though it might rise up to question his sway. Let it talk! A dozen times a day and maybe

to render intelligent reports, to take care of himself, to rest properly, and return to duty with a clear head. He is learning to be a safe man.

"In six or seven years our brakeman passes the conductor's examination. After another six or eight years of making good he passes another examination,

a

score of times a night the passenger conductor remembers to be thankful for the hardships and the dangers, for the beatings and the trials that turned his uncertain particles into purest granite sand.

"Enough of the brassy conductor-suppose that boy who comes to me for a job has never been able to shake off his dream of being an engineer. If he stands the acid I sprinkle on his tender ambition, in five or six months he is firing on a night switch engine in some yard. In seven to ten years he wins promotion to the right-hand seat

N the testing room of the administration building at the United States Navy Yard, Brooklyn, there is rigged up a big cradle which has rocked unceasingly on a pivot day and night for three months, in imitation of the rolling motion of a submarine. At one end of the cradle there is a huge iron weight acting as ballast; at the other end there is an electric storage battery.

In its completed form this type of battery represents to its inventorThomas A. Edison-eight years of uninterrupted toil and the expenditure of more than two million dollars. To the officers and jackies who volunteer for submarine duty, however, and to the United States Navy at large, it may represent an achievement too far reaching in its results to be expressed in cold figures.

Looking at this latest invention of the greatest inventor as navy men do, it means the possible solving of those two great submarine problems of life and power which, up to the present time, have made the submergible as dangerous in peace as in war, and as perilous to its crew as to its enemy. In other words, Edison, the man opposed to war and its implements, has evolved a battery which not only makes the submarine habitable by preventing asphyxiation of a crew in event of a prolonged enforced submersion, but practically doubles the strategic

efficiency of under-water craft by furnishing it with storage-battery power which will outlast any boat in which it is installed.

The timeliness of his invention, coming as it does when the submarine as an offensive weapon in modern warfare has been vindicated only recently, as was illustrated by the German submarine U-9 which, in half an hour, claimed as her share in the war three cruisers valued at twelve million dollars and more than eleven hundred lives, throwsan additional light of truthfulness on that prophecy made by Sir Percy Scott-vice admiral on the retired list of the British Navy, and styled by some the "father of the modern navy"-that "the introduction of vessels which swim under water has entirely done away with the utility. of ships which swim on top of the water."

Although the submarine has been steadily developed during fifteen years by countless inventions increasing its efficiency as a fighting machine, little good has been accomplished in making it habitable. Great sums have been spent to secure an adequate ventilation of the vessel when submerged. The heated air of the engine room and the exhaled air of the crew have been drawn off, filtered, oxygenated, cooled, and returned to the interior, but even this intricate process has failed to rid the boat of poisonous gases.

There are two distinct conditions in which the submarine is used-that is, a surface and a submerged condition. In the first a large portion of the hull is above water and the boat is propelled by large, powerful, internal-combustion engines. In this condition she is managed in about the same way as any boat on the surface, and the air in the interior is, of course, pure. In the submerged condition, when the water from the sea runs into great tanks built within the boat and virtually sinks her, all communication with the outside air is at once cut off. The crew then breathe the air contained in the body of the boat, supplemented by a large supply of compressed air in steel tanks. It would naturally seem that the release of this chemically pure air would more than offset the escape of gases. However, such is not the

case.

The moment the boat goes from a surface to a submerged condition, powerful electric motors are started by throwing in a switch. These motors derive their energy from leadsulphuric acid storage batteries and drive the propellers. The same storage batteries furnish current for numerous auxiliary motors used for pumping, steering, handling torpedoes, etc. They are the very life of the submarine itself, but once they discharge current at a high rate they give off gas. This gas not only explodes when mixed in sufficient quantity with air, but it is extremely harmful. In some cases its odor is not detected, and the crew unknowingly inhale it until there. is irritation of the mucous membrane, indicated by violent coughing and sore

COPYRIGHT-NTERNAT. NEWS

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throat. The ultimate deleterious effect upon the lungs and the resultant ill-health are too apparent to need comment.

When an ex-navy officer was asked recently if he would volunteer his services in the event of hostilities, he said:

"That would depend entirely upon the nature of the duty. If I could be reasonably sure either of complete annihilation or absolute safety I would go. The probability of 'passing out' does not worry me, but I do draw the line on becoming an invalid or cripple-a burden to myself and family for the remainder of my days." In the face of this con