Perhaps no one would suffer more from a policy of government ownership than the present force of railroad employees in the United States.  They have won their present positions for the most part by individual achievement, but their future advancement would depend not upon the continued successful handling of their work, but upon either the injustice of political favoritism or the undiscriminating rules of the Civil Service.  That some of the employees have not failed to grasp the political possibilities is shown by my own recent experience upon a train between Philadelphia and New York.  I had a difference with one of the train crew who was collecting the tickets in my car, and which was caused by carelessness and indifference on his part.  The employee finally answered my protests by remarking—­“Oh well, we don’t care so long as Woodrow Wilson is in the White House.”  The truth or untruth of this statement is not the important thing, but the fact that he made it.

The personnel would tend steadily to deteriorate in efficiency.  The successful government employee is the one who follows most closely the beaten track of precedent and past experience.  If he departs from this track, he inevitably arouses the opposition of his fellow-employees or of the unthinking part of the public, who usually desire no change.  He also takes all the risks of experiment and if he succeeds, the rewards are uncertain and small; if he fails, he personally bears all the consequences.  This is the reason for the tendency toward steady deterioration on the part of all public service.  Employees of the State must follow the path of absolute conformity to the past.  This deadens individual initiative, ambition and inventiveness.

At this point it would be well to repeat the penetrating question recently asked by Mr. Otto H. Kahn in the course of an address before the American Bankers Association in Chicago.  Said Mr. Kahn—­“Now, you and I, who are trained in business, have all we can do to conduct our respective concerns and personal affairs with a fair measure of success.  On what grounds, then, can it be assumed that by becoming endowed with the dignity of a governmental appointment, men of average or even much more than average ability will develop the capacity to run successfully the huge and complex business undertakings which the devotees of paternalism would place in their charge?”

Furthermore, the plant and its upkeep would be subject to political influence and objects.  Just as we have needlessly expensive or even useless post office buildings, harbor improvements and other works of national cost built as the result of sectional log-rolling of Congressional politicians, so probably we would have railroad stations, tracks, subway crossings, and service in general offered not from the standpoint of efficiency and public service, but as indirect campaign contributions to needy Congressional candidates for re-election.