82 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
February, 1906 
Monthly Comment 
HE city janitor who was haled from his ash 
cans to fasten the buttons on the shirt-waist 
of a lady tenant which was constructed to 
open in the back, and so arranged that she 
could not by any possibility fasten all the 
° buttons herself, was doubtless justified in 
protesting against being called upon to perform so unusual 
a duty. Whether the incident is true or not, it is a happy 
illustration of the very many different kinds of duties that 
fall to the obliging janitor, most of which he must perform, 
notwithstanding the fact that in the popular mind he is the 
most important occupant of the house, the person by whom 
it is ruled, for whom it was built, and for the payment of 
whose salary an excess of rent is demanded by the unknown 
landlord, whose actual profits bear an astonishingly small 
relationship to the gross income. ‘The janitor is at once the 
most overrated and least understood person connected with 
any building committed to his charge. If his temper be bad 
it has doubtless been reduced to that condition by the many 
demands made upon him at all hours of the day and night 
and without the smallest regard to his own feelings or per- 
sonal convenience. If his temperament be bad it has doubt- 
less been brought about by some unhappy concatenation of 
events. If he is soured in his work, if he bears the earmark 
of an unhappy, unsuccessful man, it is doubtless because he 
has tried too often to meet the demands of tenants of every 
possible temper and sex. A good janitor is a man to be 
prized above all possessions by any landlord fortunate enough 
to include him on his payroll. Such a man adds to the rental 
value of any building. The bad janitor, on the other hand, 
detracts in more ways than he himself imagines from the 
value of the property that he has in charge. He is a man 
who has to put up with much and who is often sorely tried, 
and yet, unless equipped with a good temper, with an abun- 
dance of resources, with skill and ingenuity in solving prob- 
lems and performing difficult tasks, he certainly will make 
a failure of himself and of his building. While a disobliging 
janitor is a serious detriment to any structure, the tenants 
are often responsible for more than half the difficulties that 
attend the administration of his office. Both parties should 
indeed keep constantly in mind the parable of the mote and 
the beam, for of few human activities is it so potently 
directable. 
THE season for the private car and special train service for 
the current year has now begun in real earnest and is at the 
height of its winter activity. With many fortunate persons 
the private car has long since ceased to be a luxury and has 
become a positive necessity. Its use began, of course, with 
railroad officials; but its convenience and the distinction it 
conferred upon those who traveled by it speedily brought it 
into favor among those who enjoyed doing things beyond the 
means of average persons. It is, in truth, a very delightful 
thing to have one’s arrival chronicled in the daily press as 
having been accomplished in one’s own private car; but as a 
matter of fact this latest and most expensive phase of rail- 
road travel has much to commend it from a purely utilita- 
rian point of view. The private car has taken many persons 
into regions they would not otherwise have visited. It has 
thus broadened the views of the wealthy traveler and is help- 
ing very materially in making the people of different parts of 
the United States better acquainted with each other. It is 
an expensive way of traveling, but it is also the most com- 
fortable, the most luxurious and the most satisfactory way 
of moving across the surface of the earth. The special train 
outclasses the special car in all these particulars, but it is 
simply a further development and a more advanced stage 
of the private car service. It, too, has its uses, both orna- 
mental and businesslike, and both forms of travel, it is need- 
less to add, enjoy a tremendous popularity among those who 
are able to afford them. 
FLORIDA, especially on the east coast, has been so per- 
sistently boomed as a winter resort, that the advantages the 
State possesses for farming purposes and as a place for 
permanent residence have been largely neglected. As a matter 
of fact, few portions of the United States are so admirably 
adapted for farming as much of the vast area of Florida. 
All the world knows of the tragedies involved in terrible 
frosts which lately have destroyed the orange orchards about 
once in every ten years. These calamities have unquestionably 
hurt the State as a profitable place for the raising of fruit, but 
as a matter of fact these calamities have been due to 
the delicacy of one particular fruit tree rather than to any 
real inability of the soil to produce profitable crops. ‘There 
are one or two special points of practical import which must 
appeal largely to every farmer proposing to settle in Florida. 
It is, perhaps, sufficient to point out that the Florida climate 
entails no loss of time for the winter season; it means no time 
lost in preparing for winter, and no time lost in getting ready 
for the spring and summer activities. Every thoughtful 
farmer must be aware of the enormous waste entailed by this 
loss of time in the North. That much farming is done in 
Florida in a wasteful way, that much land is misused and 
many wasteful practices indulged in, is doubtless true, but 
much the same can be said of other portions of the United 
States. The soil of Florida produces many rich and profitable 
crops and the State unquestionably has a very profitable agri- 
cultural future before it. 
INCREASED safety in railroad travel is one of the urgent 
needs of the day. Railroads have never carried so many 
people, never run so many trains, never put on so many cars, 
never employed so many men, never covered so much territory 
and never been so popular as a means of getting about as 
to-day; yet with all this has come greater danger to human 
life, more accidents, more serious accidents, more people hurt 
and more damages inflicted. The simple truth seems to be 
that the railroad managers are not sufficiently alive to the 
sacredness of human life. ‘This is the most precious of all 
earthly things. It is something that, once destroyed, can 
never be replaced, and something the injury to which may 
lead to results of most serious consequences. There is a popu- 
lar impression in Europe that railroad accidents are more 
frequent in America than abroad, because the American trains 
are run at a higher rate of speed. ‘This contention is hardly 
borne out by the facts, since with the exception of one or two 
recently established trains, the fastest trains in the world are 
operated abroad. The numerous American accidents are due 
not so much to the rapidity with which American trains are 
run as to the carelessness with which they are operated, or the 
indifference with which the American public at large views 
the railroad. An accident that involves a person not an em- 
ployee of a railroad or not a passenger may be partly due to 
the injured one’s own carelessness. An accident to a pas- 
senger is mostly due to carelessness in railway management. 
