412 History of Inland Transport 



transport, as distinct from construction and manufacture 

 offers features that are unique in their way, even if they do not, 

 also, bring about types of workers of a class distinct from those 

 to be found in the majority of other industries. 



In the latter dependence is being placed more and more on 

 the efficiency of the machinery employed, and the person of 

 greatest importance to them is the machinery-inventor or 

 the machinery-improver. The one who works the machine 

 may require to have a certain degree of skill or dexterity 

 in carrying on the necessary process, but the more nearly 

 he can approach the perfection of his machine and become, 

 as it were, part and parcel of it, the greater will often be his 

 degree of success as a worker. In his case the personal equation 

 hardly counts. He is merely the penny put into the slot in 

 order that the figures may work, and any other man, or any 

 other penny, that fulfilled the requisite conditions might be 

 expected to produce the same results. 



In railway operation great importance must certainly be 

 attached to the efficiency of the machinery, or of the system ; 

 but final success may depend to a very material extent on the 

 efficiency of the unit. Everything that human foresight and 

 railway experience can suggest may be done both in the 

 provision of complex machinery and in the drawing-up of the 

 most perfect rules and regulations to ensure safe working; 

 yet the ultimate factor in grave issues on which safety or 

 disaster will depend may be a worker who has either risen to, 

 or has failed to meet, a sudden emergency. In this way, 

 not only does the individual unit count, but the individual 

 unit in railway operation may be the Atlas upon whose 

 shoulders the railway world does, in a sense, rest. A blunder 

 in an ordinary factory or workshop may involve no more 

 than the spoiling of a machine or the waste of so much material. 

 A blunder on the railway may involve a terrible loss of human 

 life. 



Railway operation is thus calculated to give to the workers 

 engaged in transport a keener sense of responsibility, and to 

 develop therewith a greater individuality, than any other 

 of our national industries. The railway man concerned in 

 operation requires to be capable both of foresight and of 

 initiative. It is said of a certain railway in India that a tele- 

 graphic message was one day received at head-quarters from 



