At first the fire had burned fitfully, eating its way into the small economies; as when the section hands pelt stray dogs with new spikes from the stock keg, and careless freight crews seed down the right of way with cast-off links and pins; when engineers pour oil where it should be dropped, and firemen feed the stack instead of the steam-dome.

But later, when the incompetence of the new officials became the mocking gibe of the service, and the cut-rate avalanche of traffic had doubled all men’s tasks, the flames rose higher, and out of the smoke of them loomed the shape of the dread demon of demoralization.

First it was Hank Brodrick, who misread his orders and piled two freights in a mountain of wreckage in the deep cut between Long Pine and Argenta.  Next it was an overworked night man who lost his head and cranked a switch over in front of the west-bound Flyer, laying the 1020 on her side in the ditch, with the postal and the baggage-car neatly telescoped on top to hold her down.

Two days later it was Patsy Callahan; and though he escaped with his life and his job, it was a close call.  He was chasing a time freight with the fast mail, and the freight was taking the siding at Delhi to let him pass.  One of the red tail-lights of the freight had gone out, and Callahan mistook the other for the target lamp of the second switch.  He had time to yell at his fireman, to fling himself upon the throttle-bar and to set the airbrake before he began to turn Irish handsprings down the embankment; but the wrecking crew camped two whole days at Delhi gathering up the debris.

It was well on in the summer, when the two divisions, east and west, were strewn with wreckage and the pit tracks in the shops and shop yard were filled to overflowing with crippled engines, that the insurrectionaries began to gather in their respective labor groups to discuss the growing hazards of railroading on the Trans-Western.

The outcome was a protest from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, addressed to the receiver in the name of the organization, setting forth in plain terms the grievance of the members, and charging it bluntly to bad management.  This was followed immediately by similar complaints from the trainmen, the telegraphers, and the firemen; all praying for relief from the incubus of incompetent leadership.  Not to be behind these, came the Amalgamated Machinists, demanding an increase of pay for night work and overtime; and last, but not least, an intimation went forth from the Federative Council of all these labor unions hinting at possible political consequences and the alienation of the labor vote if the abuses were not corrected.

“What d’ye calc’late the major will do about it?” said Brodrick, in the roundhouse conclave held daily by the trainmen who were hung up or off duty.  “Will he listen to reason and give us a sure-enough railroad man or two at the top?”

“Not in ein t’ousand year,” quoth “Dutch” Tischer, Callahan’s alternate on the fast mail.  “Haf you not de Arkoos been reading?  It is bolotics from der beginning to der ent; mit der governor vorwaerts.”